Yesterday, the leaders of SADC, the EAC and Comesa met in Egypt and finally signed the Tripartite Free Trade Agreement, which aims to ultimately create a free trade area from South Africa up the east coast of Africa, all the way to Egypt. The signing of the agreement is mostly symbolic at this stage, but it does mean the proper negotiations will get started now, with an important target being the alignment of Customs legislation and ultimately to have a duty free area covering half of Africa.  This might be a bit of a pipe dream, but still a very interesting ambition.  (In the fact the ambition is to have the whole of Africa as a big free trade zone, but if this is going to happen, I don’t see it happening in a hurry).  It is a nice thought though. This article gives some nice views on what is happening.