Rules-Based International Cooperation During a Global Pandemic: The COVID-19 Crisis and Trade Law Lessons for Africa

Desta, Melaku Geboye

While COVID-19 is fundamentally a public health crisis, it has also brought with it a global socio-economic emergency unprecedented in the history of the world. This article examines an unlikely victim of the COVID-19 pandemic, the global regime for the governance of international trade, and does so from an African perspective. Following the proliferation of national measures restricting the export of COVID-19-essential personal protective equipment and other medical products at a time when trade literally can mean saving lives, this article asks whether import-dependent countries such as most states in Africa can rely on the multilateral trading system to secure access to these life-saving equipment and supplies. Answering this question in the negative, the article argues that those African countries that lack domestic manufacturing capacity—which make up the majority on the Continent—need to rethink their commodity-export-dependent development strategy and refocus on industrialisation backed up with adequate research and development capacity. Finally, the article also suggests that States Parties to the AfCFTA Agreement should use this period as a window of opportunity to revisit the text of the Agreement so a revised AfCFTA has a better chance of coping with the next pandemic or emergency.