Trade has long been recognized as playing an important role in the economic growth of states.  Africa lags behind other regions and has struggled to participate meaningfully in world trade.  In the past decade, Africa’s participation in world trade has been on average around 5% of world trade. The regional picture is not any different, intra-Africa trade remains insignificant, around 10%, compared to the 70% , 50% 52% and26% in intra-regional trade that has been achieved by Europe, North America, Asia and South America. 

The Chair of the AU, Moussa Faki Mahamat stated; “Today is a historic day for Africa. In 1963, the founders of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) had a vision of creating an African Common Market. The start of trading under the African continental free trade are today is an operational start towards the African Common Market. It has been a long journey of focus, determination and resilience.”  

Successful implementation of the African Free Trade Agreement, will require governments and business leaders across Africa to commit to clear plans and consistent action to maximize its offering. Without adequate roads, the right equipment for customs at the border to facilitate the fast and efficient transit of goods; the infrastructure; the manufacturing capacity, the skills to propel trade and the payments system to support trade, it reduces the impact and effectiveness of the agreement. In this webinar, we seek to interrogate the challenges and prospects of African economic integration.

The general objectives of the agreement are to:

• create a single market, deepening the economic integration of the continent
• establish a liberalised market through multiple rounds of negotiations
• aid the movement of capital and people, facilitating investment
• move towards the establishment of a future continental customs union
• achieve sustainable and inclusive socioeconomic development, gender equality and structural transformations within member states
• enhance competitiveness of member states within Africa and in the global market
• encourage industrial development through diversification and regional value chain development, agricultural development and food security, and 
• resolve challenges of multiple and overlapping memberships

Understanding and Combating Insidious Forms of Anti-Asian Racism

October 4, 2021, 12:00 to 1:30pm ET

This session of the 2021-22 Virtual Building Allyship Series, co-hosted by the Graduate and Professional Student Diversity Council and the Graduate School Office of Inclusion and Student Engagement (OISE), will include an invited talk and moderated panel discussion focused on developing an understanding of Anti-Asian racism and the many insidious forms in which it can manifest. It will also center on sharing strategies on how those seeking to serve as allies can actively help combat Anti-Asian racism including overt and covert forms of violence.

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Dancing "Asia" on the Global Stage

October 5, 2021, 9:40 to 10:55pm ET

How are the varieties of dance forms rooted in the vast expanse of Asia represented on the global stage? This lecture will offer examples of contemporary Southeast Asian dance that challenge outdated imaginaries of "Asia" and the "global" in relation to the western expectations of the "Orient". We will also compare and contrast notions of "Asian" and "Asian American" in concert dance to reveal distinctions in the cultural politics of performance within and outside U.S contexts.

This lecture is connected to the Global Dance seminar taught by Dr. Juan Manuel Aldape Muñoz in the Department of Performing and Media Arts at Cornell University.

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Gatty Lecture Series: The Mass Killings of 1965-66 in Indonesia: Problems of History and Responsibility

October 7, 2021, 12:15 to 1:30pm

Geoffrey Robinson is a Professor of History at UCLA, where he teaches and writes about political violence, genocide, and human rights, especially in Southeast Asia. His major works include: The Dark Side of Paradise: Political Violence in Bali; East Timor 1999: Crimes against Humanity; If You Leave Us Here, We Will Die: How Genocide Was Stopped in East Timor; and The Killing Season: A History of the Indonesian Massacres, 1965-66. Robinson earned his BA at McGill University and his PhD at Cornell, where he was a student of Benedict Anderson and George Kahin. Before coming to UCLA in 1997, he worked for six years at Amnesty International’s Research Department in London, and in 1999 he served as a Political Affairs Officer with the United Nations in East Timor. His current projects include a co-authored visual history of the mass violence of 1965-66 in Indonesia; and a study of the “Swedish Connection” to those events.

Click here to register, or join us at the Kahin Center.

DAS Lecture:  Covid-19, Gender and the Law, Thursday, September 9, 2021, G-08 Uris Hall @ 2:40pm

The deepening of financial intermediation mechanisms and monetary policy instruments is therefore much more urgent. The monetary models of certain African sub-regions such as West Africa are thus urgently questioned by the populations.

The shock of COVID-19 presents Africa with a game-changing opportunity to put its financing strategies on a more sustainable footing. The AEC 2021 will be an occasion to stimulate this reflection.

Diverse perspectives will be represented at the conference, which will be attended by researchers, policymakers, the private sector, financial institutions and banks, development practitioners, young people, and women from Africa and from around the world. The conference will provide a platform for established academics and young researchers to present their solution-oriented research to policymakers and decision-makers. It is expected that at the end of the conference, policy recommendations will be made on strengthening Africa’s financing system to build-forward better within the framework of the United Nations decade of action for the Sustainable Development Goals.