This article was contributed to TechCabal by Ray Youssef.
Africa is the wealthiest continent in the world but has the poorest people. Asia, the second poorest continent, has more than three times the per capita GDP of Africa. The problem is that Africa suffers from a system of economic apartheid that distributes most of the resources and wealth to countries outside the continent. This massive injustice will continue until the system changes or is replaced by something else. We need a ‘Pan-African trade Manifesto’ so the people of Africa have a clear path towards prosperity for those who generate the continent’s wealth.
The seven problems with African trade
- Most sources estimate intra-trade between African nations to be less than 13%. The number is much lower if you include only African-owned businesses. For comparison, European intra-trade is 69%, Asia is 60%, the U.S. 45%, and South America is 30%.
- African banks are almost useless for cross-border payments. Effectively, every African person with a bank account has the same degree of access to the financial system as anyone without a bank account. In Africa, it hardly makes a difference if you are banked or unbanked.
- The cost of banking in Africa is higher than anywhere else. For example, sending money within Africa using a remittance service like Western Union costs more than sending money to Africa from the West.
- Even African innovations don’t work cross-border. The mobile wallet M-PESA does not cross borders because the seven countries that use it operate on separate networks.
- Cryptocurrency platforms are being banned from Pan-African trade. The global powers are positioning themselves to control crypto just like they do with fiat currencies.
- Africa is the most overregulated business environment in the world. The system has been designed to restrict trade, stifle competition, and force entrepreneurs to operate in regions less hostile to innovation.
- African Leaders are coerced into following economic policies that aren’t in the best interests of the people they are supposed to serve. The leaders who don’t fall into line pay the price.
The effects
When African nations trade with non-African nations instead of with each other, the wealth created in the continent drains away and keeps Africa poor. The U.S. would not be a superpower if its citizens couldn’t send money from New York to New Jersey, but that’s effectively what happens in Africa. You can’t send money over the border, systems rarely talk to each other, and even when they do, the costs of doing business are astronomical. Africans have pioneered innovative products like m-Pesa, yet we are supposed to believe they can’t figure out cross-border payments.
The overregulation of markets that makes Pan-African trade almost impossible is supposedly necessary to increase safety. Still, the regulation’s effect is to force entrepreneurs to operate in a hostile, restrictive and expensive business environment. The result of all this dysfunction is hamstrung leadership across the continent. Every national leader who tried to implement Pan-African trade was hampered by an international financial system that treated Africans and the rest of the Global South with disdain.
Unless that system changes and allows African workers and businesses to compete on a level playing field, African people will continue to be starved of the opportunities that most of the world takes for granted.
A future with Pan-African trade
When African nations declared independence from political apartheid, they did so without breaking away from economic apartheid. The Colonialists never left Africa – all they did was make the chains that held us down invisible. Our leaders never talk about it; even the African Union does nothing about it. Either they are ignorant, or the West has forced them into silence. I think the latter is true, but there is a way out of this mess.
The solution to this problem of subjugation is for us to help ourselves because we can’t rely on anyone else. We don’t have to fall to our knees in front of these people any more. We can determine our futures and enjoy the prosperity we deserve. It starts by answering a straightforward question:
What would happen if we enabled Pan-African trade?
If we enable Pan-African trade, the first effect will be a ten-fold increase in sales and revenue for every non-local African business because they will gain 53 new nations as customers – a market of 1.4 billion people. The flow-on effects include new jobs and a reduction in unemployment, which means local businesses will have to scale up to meet the demands of the newly employed. More employment increases marriage and birth rates, increasing Africa’s world-leading population growth. Seventy per cent of the world’s population growth will come from Africa over the next 30 years. The massive increase in internal trade will make Africa the world’s biggest consumer market, and that’s good for African entrepreneurship. Cities like Dubai will dot the African landscape in as little as a decade. The brain drain that Africa experienced over the past 80 years will reverse, and talent will flood in as the African diaspora returns home.
Enabling Pan-African trade – The Manifesto
We must enable Pan-African trade, but how do we do it? What are the risks?
The biggest risk to the continent right now is to do nothing. Despite decades of speeches and one-sided trade agreements, nothing much has changed in Africa since the end of the colonial era. The only way to move forward is to enable pan-African trade, and the process has to be systematic and continent-wide.
- Education
The African youth must educate themselves about money. They must know where it comes from, how it works, and what makes it stop working as it should—as a means of exchange. When the streets become laser-focused on this issue, Pan-Africanism won’t be ignored. That’s when the Gen Z leaders will rise to drive the narrative and defend our manifesto with confidence and ferocity.
Education includes re-learning all of our history. Our history is all about money and how the central bankers have corrupted it behind every war on the continent. Education also includes discovering new heroes, not the heroes of every Western narrative but our home-grown heroes who died so that we can be here now. Only when we instinctively reject EVERYTHING that comes out of the Western media will our youth be fully integrated with our mission.
- Unification
The only way our youth can take control is by working within a democratic framework. A United African Youth Party should be formed in every African nation to guide every Senate and House on the continent. The United African Youth Party will vigorously advocate for Pan-African trade and defend it against any foreign or domestic opponent until it has been fully enabled across the continent.
- Freedom from Regulation – Reject and Inject
We must reject any IMF proxy finance bills, CBDCs, and any form of regulation forced upon us by nefarious groups. We must inject bills that foster a business environment conducive to Pan-African trade. We need bills that promote Pan-African trade so our young entrepreneurs can begin their careers in a nurturing environment that helps them to thrive. The Pan African Trade Bill will be a product of a Pan African mindset which has, as its ultimate standard of success, the following ideology:
“Make a daily positive change to lift up the most vulnerable members of our society.”
What will the Pan African Trade Bill include?
The Pan-African Trade Bill must include mobile wallets that work across all African borders because trade is facilitated by the movement of money—without the ability to transact, our money cannot be used, and trade is restricted.
The Bill must allow visa-free travel across the continent for all African citizens. Hence, our brothers and sisters would have the same freedom of movement that most of the world enjoys – not only so we can do business together but also experience all of this diverse continent we call home. Finally, we need a Pan-African banking system and a Pan-African currency facilitated by crypto—maybe we can call it the African Pesa.
This manifesto is all we need to make Africa free. We have the tools, the people, and all the resources of this great continent. All we need now is the will to make Pan-African trade a reality.
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Ray Youssef is the CEO of NoOnes. He is a serial entrepreneur who has founded 13 startups to date, entirely bootstrapping each company since inception. With 20+ years of experience building peer-to-peer-focused businesses, he is spearheading NoOnes’ mission to secure a billion daily active users of Bitcoin within the next seven years.
