Digital trade and its discontents: Evaluating the impact of the African continental free trade area’s digital trade protocol on the regulatory autonomy of State Parties’
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Date
2024
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Publisher
University of the Western Cape
Abstract
Trade, once conducted over camel caravans along the Silk Road, ships navigating the Cape of Good Hope, and, in more recent times, by cranes unloading containers at vast sea ports, has
been fundamentally transformed in the digital age. Digitalisation has redefined the nature of commerce, significantly expanding its scope with the collection and transfer of data now
integral to the delivery and provision of digital goods and services.This new scope of trade, formerly referred to as e-commerce, has been termed ‘digital trade’ and has been statistically defined as ‘all international trade transactions that are digitally ordered and/or digitally delivered’.
Digital trade has emerged as a dynamic and rapidly growing area of the digital economy with the value of global exports of digitally delivered services reaching US$ 3.82 trillion in 2022
capturing an estimated 54 per cent share of total global services exports and accounting for 12 per cent of total goods and services exports. Together with digitally delivered services,
digitally ordered trade is an important component of digital trade and is an increasingly vital way for producers to reach and take orders from customers located domestically or abroad.
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Keywords
African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), Data governance, Data protection, Digital trade law, State parties
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