Ghana: 14 African commodity exchanges unite under AFCFTA

A sum of 14 commodity exchanges across the continent have united to leverage their combined potential within the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), marking a significant agreement.

The AfCFTA Association of Commodities Exchanges (ACX) places a strong emphasis on its agenda, which includes collaborative efforts to ensure food security and improve market efficiency by sharing knowledge and best practices. ACX aims to promote modern trading practices, such as electronic trading platforms and standardized contracts, while also enhancing market information availability throughout the continent. These measures will lead to improved market efficiency, reduced transaction costs, and increased participation from both domestic and international traders.

This is especially important since the formalized commodity trading sector in most AfCFTA markets is in its early stages, except for South Africa.

The ACX initiative is spearheaded by the Ghana Commodity Exchange (GCX), and will most importantly facilitate cross-border trade. Under this, ACX hopes to work closely with AfCFTA on harmonizing trade regulations, simplifying Customs procedures and expediting cross-border transactions.

Chief Executive Officer of GCX Tucci Ivowi, emphasized that there is no more opportune moment for African commodity exchanges to play a role in making a unified African market a reality than the present.

“Different African countries have established commodity exchanges and we are at different stages; there are common challenges across the board, but we also see common opportunities. So, we gathered together all the commodity exchanges in Africa to really sit down and have a dialogue about how we can work together on areas such as promoting food security, collaborating for inter-regional trade and also to ensure market efficiency across the continent” he added.

Altogether, 14 active commodity exchanges are coming together, a move that is widely seen by the participating countries as fitting, considering the common trading framework set by AfCFTA.