AfCFTA, UNDP Task Africa on Regulation to Drive MSMEs

African governments can turn trade barriers into accelerators that build back stronger economies and accelerate intra-continental trade.
At a high-level side event on the margins of the 76th United Nations General Assembly, the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Secretariat, Africa Investor and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) presented the new and innovative Regulation as a Stimulus economic model and urged African governments to support Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) through intentional regulatory reforms that remove trade bottlenecks so as to enhance the continent’s socioeconomic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Through interviews with industry stakeholders, documentary research, econometric analysis, policy mapping and surveys, Regulations as a Stimulus (RaaS), developed by UNDP and Africa Investor, with support from the AfCFTA Secretariat and a research partnership with Cariolis Technologies, identifies regulatory levers that can be utilised by African Heads of State to quickly create change, offsetting some of the short-term adjustment costs and relieving firms from higher export costs.