UPDATE 1-African free trade deal launch unlikely this year - AfCFTA Sec Gen

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By Libby George
LAGOS, May 1 (Reuters) - A blockbuster African trade deal is
unlikely to be implemented before early next year, an official
said on Friday, after the disruption caused by the new
coronavirus made the current July 1 deadline unworkable.
Wamkele Mene, Secretary-General of the African Continental
Free Trade Area, told Reuters that while only the heads of state
of the 55-member AfCFTA could sanction changes to the deadlines,
the cancelled summit between leaders planned for May in South
Africa left few options.
"It is only after the summit that you can say we have a new
trading date. The next opportunity of a summit is on 2 January
2021," Mene said.
The continental free-trade zone would, if successful, become
the largest since the creation of the World Trade Organization
in 1994, stitching 1.3 billion people together in a $3.4
trillion economic bloc.
Mene's role is effectively chief adviser to government
leaders, who hold the exclusive right to approve all parts of
the deal and its implementation.
He has advised them to defer the July 1 implementation
deadline due to the extraordinary circumstances.
It would have required nations to liberalize at least 97% of
their tariff lines and 90% of imports. Mene is instead advising
them to allow free movement of goods, despite borders being
closed to human traffic as part of virus containment efforts,
and to allow zero duties on 40 specific goods that would help
combat the virus, such as soap, disinfectant and personal
protective gear.
"The current circumstances simply are not conducive to the
comprehensive trade we had imagined," he said.
On the advice of the African Centre for Disease Control, the
final phase of in-person trade negotiations were halted in
March. This cut off two months of crunch-time talks over
technical details that would have seen hundreds of negotiators
spending 17-hour days passing thousands of documents back and
forth, whilst translating between the bloc's four official
languages.
Moving these discussions online, Mene said, is unrealistic.
"The technical difficulties are immense," he said. "I'm not
convinced...that doing them over video conference is feasible."
He said efforts would be redoubled once negotiators could
meet in person, and that African leaders are fully committed to
the deal.
"What this pandemic has done is underscore the imperative of
this objective. When you are overly reliant on a particular
trade partner, you are vulnerable," he said. "The pandemic is
slowing us down, but I think this is going to happen."