Monday, September 30, 2024

WTO Chairs Programme African Trade Group issued a call for papers for an International Conference on International Trade Challenges in Africa and WTO Reform: The Way Forward. The Conference is organised by the African Trade Group (ATG) @ WTO Chairs: Benin, Cameroon, Egypt,
Kenya, Lesotho, Mauritius, Morocco, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Tunisia. It will take place on 28 and 29 November 2024 in Yaoundé, Cameroon.

The international conference targets the following objectives:
- Facilitate insightful and purposeful discussions about global trade and arrive at concrete proposals on how to achieve a fairer and more inclusive multilateral trading system, which will more readily serve the interests of developing (and especially African) countries.
- Summarise the key challenges that Africa faces in its international trade endeavours (non-tariff measures, infrastructure and logistics hurdles, informal trade in agriculture and other sectors, trade in unprocessed goods/low diversification, low participation in global value chains, the digital divide and gender issues,
among others).
- Propose solutions for overcoming Africa’s international trade-related challenges, with a particular focus on leveraging the collective strengths of RECs and the AfCFTA.
- Present Africa’s vision of how the WTO should be reformed, against the backdrop of the current negotiation process.
- Build a framework for leading a discussion on Africa’s trading future at the fourteenth Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (MC14) in Cameroon.

The topics considered may include, but are not limited to, the following:
- The multilateral trade system and policy space of Africa
- Trade and industrialisation
- Trade and environment
- Trade, gender and human rights
- Participation of African in regional and global value chains
- Trade facilitation
- Digital trade
- Agriculture and food security
- Fishing subsidies
- Special and differential treatment
- Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights etc.

Deadline for submission of full papers: 30 September 2024.

For more information and guidelines please refer to the attachements.