President Cyril Ramaphosa says South Africa takes pride in the fact that it signed the free trade agreement that took place in Kigali, Rwanda.
He was speaking at the Ubuntu awards held in Cape Town Thursday night.
Ramaphosa gave details about what transpired.
“As South Africa we are proud to have signed the Kigali Declaration on the establishment of the continental Free Trade area, signifying an unequivocal commitment to the achievement of this free trade area. Through the Kigali declaration we have undertaken to ratify all related instruments in accordance with our domestic laws and recess, so that it is clear, because the media tended to say the other side signed the agreement and South Africa signed the declaration. We had two documents that spoke to the establishment of the Free Trade area. Those countries that had completed their own consultation processes were able to sign the agreement in full.”
Meanwhile, Ramaphosa has also called on South African citizens to take an opportunity to explore what is happening in the rest of the continent and to learn about the free trade agreement.
“We encourage our people to participate in domestic and international endeavours through active citizenry. We would like to see more and more South Africans becoming interested in what happens in a number of countries on our continent and what happens in the various regional blocs on our continent. We would like to see many of our people giving themselves the opportunity to learn also about this African continental free trade area agreement we struck.”
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