{"id":14586,"date":"2019-07-07T20:27:33","date_gmt":"2019-07-07T20:27:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paulkagame.com\/?p=14586"},"modified":"2019-07-11T08:28:33","modified_gmt":"2019-07-11T08:28:33","slug":"statement-by-president-kagame-at-the-12th-extraordinary-summit-of-the-african-union-afcfta-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/?p=14586","title":{"rendered":"Statement by President Kagame at the 12th Extraordinary Summit of the African Union: AfCFTA Report"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"fb-root\"><\/div>\n<p>Chairperson, thank you for the floor. Excellencies, the launch of the operational phase of the African Continental Free Trade Area is a milestone for our Union.<\/p>\n<p>History will record the central role played by the President of Niger, His Excellency Mahamadou Issoufou, in bringing us to this point. My brother and friend, I congratulate you.<\/p>\n<p>I also wish to record my thanks to the Government and people of Niger for the warm welcome and excellent facilities we are enjoying.<\/p>\n<p>I commend President Issoufou for his comprehensive report. Rwanda fully agrees with its recommendations. We particularly concur on two points. One, the need to cater for small-to-medium cross-border traders, by simplifying trade regimes applicable to them. Two, the decision to commence trading under the AfCFTA on July 1<sup>st<\/sup>, 2020.<\/p>\n<p>I agree with the proposal of the Executive Council designating Ghana as our choice to host the AfCFTA Secretariat. I congratulate them as well.<\/p>\n<p>Our task now is to finalise the remaining negotiations and operational instruments in a timely manner.<\/p>\n<p>I thank you, Chairperson.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chairperson, thank you for the floor. Excellencies, the launch of the operational phase of the African Continental Free Trade Area is a milestone for our Union. History will record the central role played by the President of Niger, His Excellency Mahamadou Issoufou, in bringing us to this point. My brother and friend, I congratulate you. I also wish to record my thanks to the Government and people of Niger for the warm welcome and excellent facilities we are enjoying. I&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":14587,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-speech","post-has-thumbnail"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14586"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14586\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14588,"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14586\/revisions\/14588"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}