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Reaping thebenefits of theEconomicPartnershipAgreements inAfricaAddis Ababa, Ethiopia8-10 October 2008The Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) continue to drawvaried reactions, not only in the constituencies of the negotiatingparties—the African, Caribbean and Pacific and European UnionStates—but across the world, moreover, the private sector, fromsmall rural farmers struggling to improve their livelihoods throughagriculture and the day-time worker in a small cottage manufacturingindustry in a small African town, to the workers and owners oflarge plantations and formal manufacturing firms in African citiesthat are concerned by the EPAs. Some of them are worried aboutEPAs, despite the opportunities these agreements might have.The cause of the worry is that they are still uncertain that the EPAswill deliver on their development promise. This is made worse bythe discordant voices on what EPAs will do to African economies.Some of the issues causing concern include the fear that EPAs willundermine regional integration in Africa. These fears were, to a largeextent, confirmed by the rush to initial interim EPAs last year. Thereare also concerns that the focus of EPAs is on trade, to the detrimentof development objectives. Again, the audit of the interim EPAs didsuggest that the development objective could be constrained by insufficientattention to special and differential treatment and lack ofbinding commitments on how development-oriented provisions willbe financed.Integrating Africa93