Wamkele Mene, the Secretary-General of the African Continental Free Trade Africa (AfCFTA), has hinted that the budget of the secretariat has been given the nod and as such his outfit will commence advertising positions soon.

According to him, the approval to formally engage the services of professionals in the secretariat will provide optimum leeway for the organization to indulge in advert placement on available positions to qualified applicants.

Mr. Wamkele Mene noted that in a matter of weeks, “we shall be in the position to start advertising positions both the ones that are the professional levels and those that will be support staffs”.

As part of the employment opportunities, Mr. Wamkele Mene also projected the chance of qualified applicants undergoing mentorship as well.

“Specifically for people that come from the universities so that they have opportunities to work with us for a year. The idea is to build the spirit of young country professionals so that after the period that they spend with us they can either be absorbed into the secretariat or they can join the private sector”.

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo officially commissioned and handed over the AfCFTA Secretariat building to Mr Moussa Faki, AUC Chairperson.

Mr. Mene, at the official commissioning and handing over of the AfCFTA Secretariat building to the African Union Commission (AUC) in Accra on Monday, August 17, 2020, stated that the African Continental Free Trade Africa (AfCFTA) signals that Africa is open for business and mutually beneficial investment thereby creating decent jobs and improving livelihoods.

“We have a combined gross domestic product (GDP) of $3.4 trillion, Africa boasts over 400 African companies that earn annual revenues of $1billion or more”.

He further revealed that the ongoing COVID-19 crisis had ravaged global economic activity and severely disrupted trade and global supply chains, and of course, had had a negative effect on global public health.

“Africa should not despair and fall into despondency – from a trade perspective, we should see this crisis as an opportunity – through the AfCFTA, we have an opportunity to reconfigure our supply chains, to reduce reliance on others and to expedite the establishment of regional value chains that will boost intra Africa trade and secure Africa’s productive capacity for generations to come”.

The Secretary General of AfCFTA also highlighted some activities he had engaged in just months of being in office.

“In this connection, in the four months that I have been in office, I have already initiated and had very promising engagements with three of the world’s largest automobile-manufacturers, with a view to the establishment of automobiles value chains across Africa.

“I intend to extend this type of an engagement to include other labour intensive sectors such as Agro-processing.”

He said in this endeavor, the AfCFTA Secretariat shall work with their sister department of Trade and Industry of the AUC, as well as with our partners such as United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and Afreximbank, to advance Africa’s industrial development objectives.