Nigeria’s Deputy Speaker champions Africa’s digital trade drive at WTO-IPU meet

…Rallies planetary MPs to physique a shared integer future

By Victor Ahiuma-Young

Geneva: Nigeria’s Deputy Speaker House of Representatives, Benjamin Kalu has urged parliamentarians crossed the satellite to instrumentality bold legislative steps that volition crook the committedness of integer commercialized into a shared motor of growth, stressing that Africa is determined to signifier its ain destiny successful the fast-moving planetary economy.

Speaking astatine the WTO-IPU Steering Committee league of the WTO Public Forum 2025 successful Geneva, Switzerland, Kalu described integer commercialized arsenic “one of the defining governance challenges of our time,” informing that countries which neglect to trade robust rules hazard being near behind.

According to him, “The integer system is nary longer a distant promise; it is the regular world of our entrepreneurs and the skyline of accidental for our youth. In Africa, we person chosen not to hold for others to constitute our future.

“Through the African Continental Free Trade Area, AfCFTA, and its Protocol connected Digital Trade, we are gathering our ain determination multilateralism — a blueprint for a harmonized, integrated integer market.

“But blueprints unsocial bash not physique houses. Success depends connected the laws we pass, the spot we create, and the predictability we guarantee. “In Nigeria, we person acted: the Nigeria Data Protection Act of 2023 safeguards privacy, portion the forthcoming National Digital Economy Bill volition anchor e-commerce and concern successful ineligible certainty. Across Africa, parliaments are not spectators; we are legislating the future.

“Let america beryllium frank: rules without enforcement are illusions. For smaller economies, a binding, two-tier quality colony strategy is not optional; it is simply a substance of survival.

“We each cognize that speeches bash not physique futures; actions do. For america to determination to coordinated action, I suggest 3 steps: A Legislative Tracking Mechanism that engenders peer-to-peer accountability, requiring america to study backmost connected however we construe our corporate resolutions into factual enactment wrong our nationalist parliaments; Concrete WTO enactment for AfCFTA implementation to further deepen integer commercialized successful Africa; and A Model Digital Trade Legislative Toolkit, developed with UNCTAD and ITC, to equip parliaments with best-practice laws for a pro-development integer economy.

“Colleagues, the prime earlier america is stark: a fragmented integer aboriginal shaped by others, oregon a shared integer prosperity shaped by us. If we enactment together, we tin guarantee that integer commercialized becomes not a caller disagreement but a caller span — linking trust, opportunity, and inclusive multilateralism.”

The station Nigeria’s Deputy Speaker champions Africa’s integer commercialized thrust astatine WTO-IPU meet appeared archetypal connected Vanguard News.