Positioning Nigeria as a First World Economy in the Era of Signing the African Continental Free Trade Area (AFCFTA)

Abstract

The challenging circumstances of Nigerian businesses within the African continental free trade agreement has not really placed Nigerian economy at the desired global height as expected. The challenges in line with the ex post facto result of our study showed that, Nigerian was prepared to be launched at the global business circle but are still confronted with specific issues due to lack of proper African continental integration. Our report also showed that, Nigerian capital and financial markets are robust to leverage AfCFTA to boost trade and commerce, attract FDI, utilized our abundance natural and human resources and increase exports. It was however, recommended that: A special purpose vehicle should be created to monitor the progress of the AfCFTA strategies in each of the Member countries. Also, Nigerian government should work harmoniously with stakeholders to ensure trade liberalization especially export sector and start up so as to boost local production; trade Concessions should be given to infant industries, and laws should be made to protect SMEs from foreign and giant competitions; ease of doing business policies should be improved to attract foreign direct investment, FPI and capital inflows. Keywords: Globalization, AfCFTA, International trade, Trade balance, Classical & Neoclassical trade theories.