Hon Speaker, our foreign policy position moves from a basis that the promotion of regional integration is an important economic and political goal of our government. South Africa's development is linked to the development and stability of Africa, especially our region of Southern Africa. It is on this basis that our government has over the years of our democracy, committed itself towards consolidating the African Agenda.
To advance this agenda, we have sought to establish constructive partnerships with other African countries and have promoted mutually- beneficial economic relations that are based on the ideal of regional integration. As we all work towards this African continental integration,
we are mindful of the prevailing development challenges facing not only our region in Southern Africa, but the whole continent. These development challenges are well documented, and include amongst others undiversified commodity-led growth paths; small and fragmented markets; infrastructure deficiencies such as energy, telecommunications, poor connectivity as far as roads, rail and ports are concerned, which all have a negative impact on trade facilitation; lack of technological infrastructure and research; instability linked to armed conflicts and poor political governance; inadequate human capital and brain drain; and dependence of certain countries on foreign aid.
For decades, the continent was characterised by a history of civil strives and armed conflict, which has since been replaced by maturing democracies and good governance. It is true that we still have isolated cases of instability, but overall, the current reality is that Africa is not the same as yesterday.
The region has a trade and investment potential in areas of agriculture and agroprocessing, infrastructure
development in terms of roads, rail, ports, telecommunications, water purification, bulk supply of electricity, logistics, and information communication technology, to name a few. If these are fully exploited, they will contribute to establishing appropriate interconnections that would enhance intra-regional trade.
The African Continental Free Trade Area that has been signed and ratified by 54 African countries seeks to fast-track the agenda of continental integration and creates one large market as opposed to current fragmented markets found at country level.
The African Continental Free Trade Agreement therefore, represents a significant leap forward in achieving the longstanding objective of African integration and shared continental economic co-operation. It is about market integration with infrastructure development, and industrial development to boost intra-Africa trade and sustainable economic growth. By providing a larger continental market, this free trade area offers us the opportunity to improve economies of scale and efficiency,
thereby improving Africa's competitiveness both in its own markets and globally.
This Free Trade Area is an important initiative in accelerating industrialisation and economic development across the African continent. It aims to build an integrated market in Africa that will see a market of over a billion people with a combined gross domestic product, GDP, of approximately 3,3 trillion US dollars. The 54 member states are expected to progressively eliminate restrictive measures that affect trade in services through the reduction and removal of market access barriers.
Currently, South Africa's primary export destination in Africa is the Southern African Development Community, SADC, region due to the advantage of proximity to countries in this region. This free trade area presents us with an opportunity to further grow our trade volumes and expansion to new markets. For instance, we can build further from current trade volumes with the likes of Nigeria in West Africa, which is currently around R56 billion, Kenya in East Africa which is currently R9,1
billion, Cameroon in Central Africa which is currently around R630 million, and Egypt in North Africa currently at around R4,1 billion.
This free trade area further provides South Africa with alternative markets for the export of value-added goods, as well as trade in services. While the scope of this free trade agreement does not include technology and digital trade in specific terms, the African Union is currently undertaking a parallel initiative on the development of an African digital trade and digital economy development strategy through the specialised technical committee on trade, industry and mineral resources.
For its part, South Africa is developing a comprehensive response to the digital trade and the Fourth Industrial Revolution through the President's Advisory Commission on the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The emerging issues of these processes as-far-as initiatives around the Fourth Industrial Revolution is concerned, should bring into sharper focus how as African countries we can engage
meaningfully in technical co-operation across various sectors of development.
We should look at how we address youth unemployment by harnessing our manufacturing capabilities and human innovation. We can for example make major advances in upscaling of our value-added exports taking advantage of rapid technological advances to achieve new efficiencies along product value chains.
The deployment of digital banking technologies and solutions across the continent will integrate financial services, facilitate trade, eliminate red tape, and reduce the cost of doing business on the continent. It will link producers with markets. For our part, this suggests that the agenda of building a better Africa must also focus on technical co-operation between relevant research and development agencies as well as industry associations in areas of industrial research, technology development, standards and enterprise development as tools to enhance further trade and investment.
We therefore call upon the private sector in particular, to play its part in the process of a continuous skilling of its workforce to adapt to the ever-changing environment influenced by technological advancement. Thank you, hon Speaker.