Theatre artist and entrepreneur Gathige Maina is taking a caravan across Africa, not just to gain experience in moving across borders on the continent, but also to promote the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
Free movement of people and goods is one of the anticipated benefits of AfCFTA.
So far, Mr. Maina has realized how little young people know about the AfCFTA, which came into effect in May 2019. He also discovered that countries have varying laws and regulations, some quite prohibitive.
Still, the situation is not as bad as people think, said Mr. Maina. He is director of Youth Motion Kenya, an organization he founded during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020. On his new organization’s platform, he engages with other young people online on the AfCFTA.
Under Youth Motion’s auspices, Mr. Maina launched the AfCFTA Kazini Caravan (Swahili for “AfCFTA at work”), a mobile advocacy initiative to raise awareness of the AfCFTA among Kenyan and other African youths.
Creating art across borders
The Kazini Caravan travels across borders overland to prove that young people can move across Africa and embrace opportunities elsewhere, he said.
Using flash mobs, the caravan visits art and cultural centers as well as universities, engaging audiences with performance and fine art, music, poetry, theatre and drama, rap music, and spoken word to spread AfCFTA messages.
The maiden caravan in November 2021 traveled from Nairobi to Durban — in time for the Intra-African Trade Fair (IATF) — through Dodoma, Lusaka and Gaborone, covering five countries and 9,300 km.
The IATF, a trade show designed as a platform for sharing information on trade, investing and market opportunities, brings together buyers and sellers, investors and government officials to make business deals.
The second edition of the caravan will span 20 countries across five of six African regions. It will end in Cairo, Egypt, during the IATF. As of early September, the caravan had passed through Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, Kigali in Rwanda, and Kampala in Uganda.
Taking artistic routes to success
“The conversation about the AfCFTA has not been led by young people, but by institutions such as the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and the AfCFTA Secretariat, which is great,” said Mr. Maina. “But, how about having young people lead that discussion for other young people and urge them to take up action in unique ways such as the Kazini Caravan?”
The caravan’s travels, he maintained, prove that cross-border movement is possible, but Africans, particularly the youth, could improve it.
“The youth must go beyond conferences or workshops to discuss the trade agreement. To take an artistic route to promoting the AfCFTA, we came up with the caravan idea,” said Mr. Maina.
Mr. Maina believes that easy movement of Africans across borders will boost Africa’s rich culture with over 2,000 languages and diverse heritages.
“The African Union designated 2021 as the ‘Year of the Arts, Culture and Heritage: Levers for Building the Africa We Want,’ and this theme has helped to propel our maiden artistic caravan from Kenya to South Africa.”
Turning trade policy into practice
With over 50 per cent of African youth working in the creative industry, the approval of the AfCFTA Protocol on Youth and Women will further enhance free trade. The protocol is currently being developed in line with the AfCFTA agreement.
“The youths are the ones to breathe life into this framework because the free movement of people can be just a policy on paper. But, if we make that movement ourselves, then we would be making the policy work.”
Youth Motion has also launched AfCFTArt, which promotes art through a series of competitions among talented student artists from 20 African countries. The artists submit works of art and culture on AfCFTA in the forms of short films, music, paintings and digital designs.
Entries opened in July and will close in September 2023, with an award ceremony in November 2023.
“Trade is a unifier,” said Mr. Maina. “Trade provides opportunities for young people to discover themselves and make their voice count.” Now is the time for such discovery.
