About the EPAs project
Project background
The Eastern and Southern African (ESA) region’s single most important trading partner is the EU, who absorbed 40% of their exports in 2003. The ESA countries are currently collectively re-negotiating their trade relationship with the EU as per the provisions of the Cotonou agreement of 2000. These negotiations will lead to the signing of a regional Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), which will require the ESA countries to provide some degree of reciprocal access to EU imports in return for maintaining preferential access to European markets.
In providing reciprocal access to EU imports, an EPA will require ESA countries to expose their economies to competition with the EU to a greater extent than ever before, posing significant challenges for ESA policy-makers. Between now and December 2007 when the negotiations are due to be completed, the ESA countries will need to decide which sectors to open up to trade with the EU and what period of time and development assistance they require to compete effectively with the EU. These decisions will be vital to safeguarding livelihoods, as the agricultural sector is still heavily subsidised in the EU, and ESA industrial sectors lack competitiveness and are vulnerable.
 By ensuring that ESA countries maintain preferential access to the EU market and with the support of an integrated package of development assistance, EPAs also provide the potential for ESA countries to expand their trade with the EU. In order to maximise the benefits from these opportunities, policy-makers need to decide in which sectors to pursue preferential access, as well as the volume of development assistance they require to support trade expansion.
In addition, it is widely accepted that due to the fall in import tariffs that it will precipitate, an EPA will have a significant impact on fiscal revenues and require ESA countries to carry out significant fiscal reforms. This means that an EPA could threaten public spending on areas such as health, education and social and economic development and through this, fundamental human rights. In order to safeguard against such damaging social impacts ESA policy-make rs need to decide on a properly sequenced program of trade reforms that is integrated with effective fiscal restructuring and supported by development assistance from the EU to assist adjustment.
One of the keys to making these negotiations work for development and to combat poverty, is to ensure that a broad consultation on the policy response to the wide range of policy issues that EPAs pose, takes place across all sectors of society. This is so that the concerns of an array of stakeholders, including those of marginalised groups and producers, can be incorporated into the policy response.
In developing regions, such as ESA, CSOs are one of the key groups that need to be consulted in this process. This is because in these regions governments often lack the resources and political will to fully engage with all sectors of society and CSOs therefore play an important role in providing services and protecting the rights of marginalised groups. In addition, CSOs are one of the key channels through which poor producers are able to voice their concerns and protect their livelihoods. CSO voices therefore need to be heard if EPAs are to improve the livelihoods of the vast numbers of people that they provide support to.
However, ESA governments have so far failed to carry out broad consultations with CSOs and the results of impact studies have not been disseminated widely contributing to a low level of grass-roots awareness in relation to EPAs. This situation is a symptom of the difficulties CSOs in the ESA countries face in holding their governments to account and to maintaining effective channels of communication with policy-makers.
A number of CSOs across the ESA region are therefore working to raise awareness in relation to EPAs amongst civil society and to advocate their concerns to policy-makers. However, CUTS LRC’s consultations with these CSOs have revealed that they have insufficient resources to carry out these activities to the extent required to effectively engage civil society.
The project therefore aims to tackle the challenges that CSOs face in engaging with their governments on EPAs. It will do this by building the capacity of key CSOs in six countries (Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia) to carry out awareness-raising and consultative activities on EPAs with a wide range of civil society groups and to provide them with the skills and channels of communication through which they can advocate their concerns to policy-makers.
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