ISDS Case Map
ESA
Eastern and Southern Africa
Transnational corporations could be granted unfettered access to Kenya's banking and telecommunications sectors if trade talks taking place in Antananarivo, Madagascar, favour Europe.
Commerce, Trade and Industry Minister, Felix Mutati, has reiterated Eastern and Southern African (ESA) countries' commitment to conclude a comprehensive, inclusive and development friendly Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the European Union (EU).
Initialled by Zimbabwe and the Seychelles on 28 November 2007 and by Mauritius on 5 December 2007
East African trade ministers have thrown a new spanner in the works as the countdown to the December 31, 2007 deadline for signing a new trade partnership deal with the industrialized EU states narrows to less than 60 days. The ministers held a secret meeting in Nairobi away from the full glare of anti-globolisation activists and agreed to sign the contentious Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) only if an amendment ensuring that the region's taxation regime remained intact.
As Africa's leaders met in Accra, Ghana, last week to consider ways of consolidating continental unity through increased trade, pertinent questions were being raised over the impact that a new trade arrangement between the European Union and the 75-member ACP trading bloc will have on regional integration.
Anti-poverty campaigners have likened trade negotiations between the European Union (EU) and several regions in Africa to a boxing match between a schoolboy novice and a heavyweight champion.
The future of talks between 16 Eastern and Southern African (ESA) countries and the European Union hangs in the balance after the ESA countries accused the EU of smuggling a document into the agenda at their recent meeting in the Burundi capital, Bujumbura.
Negotiations between African countries and the European Union aimed at finalizing free trade deals known as Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) are continuing apace. As part of the process that will finalise EPA deals sometime in 2007, Eastern and Southern Africa countries have just submitted a draft EPA document to the EU. But, in this article, Richard Kamidza documents the astonishing lack of consultation in the negotiating process, claiming that in some cases even cabinet ministers don't know the details.
A recent draft of the EPA between the EU and 16 Eastern and Southern Africa countries gives a taste of what these treaties might spell out in terms of rights to local biodiversity and traditional knowledge.
