The African Development Bank (AfDB) on Wednesday approved a $7.5-million grant to finance the Tripartite Capacity Building Programme (TCBP), which will stengthen the collaboration between the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, the East African Community and the Southern African Development Community, known as the Tripartite Free Trade Area (TFTA).

The programme would provide technical assistance to the three regional economic communities and the 26 TFTA regional member countries with a view to increase intra-TFTA trade.

The AfDB said in a statement on Friday that the initiative aimed to enhance the TFTA negotiation process, develop trade facilitation instruments and industrial cluster action plans in the TFTA .

This would entail the training of public and private sector officials, advisers and consultants to beneficiary regional economic communities, which would be supplemented by regional courses and workshops.

Some of the expected outputs of the programme included the installation of software for nontariff measures databases and the enhancement of capacity to manage sanitary and phytosanitary barriers to trade; improved capacity to negotiate market access and undertake implementation; and strengthened capacity to effectively develop industrial clusters and value chains.

Its overarching objective was to support intra-TFTA trade growth through the removal of barriers to the movement of goods and services, the development of regional value chains, job creation and poverty alleviation, thereby facilitating the realisation of inclusive growth.

The bank said these proposed interventions were anchored in its 2013 to 2022 strategy, which it believed would complement the implementation of the regional integration strategy for East and Southern Africa.

“The programme is also justified in view of the developmental approach to regional integration adopted by the second Tripartite Summit, held in 2012, which is anchored on market integration, infrastructure and industrial development,” said the AfDB.

The infrastructure pillar of the tripartite arrangement was currently being supported by other development partners, as well as the Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa, known as Pida.

“This leaves a gap for the provision of support under the other two pillars of market integration and industrial development – where the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) has, so far, been providing administrative, technical and financial support to the tripartite process through Trademark Southern Africa and Trade Mark East Africa,” the bank commented.

However, additional resources and technical support were required to complement the DFID in implementing the TFTA work programmes and decisions of the TFTA task force.

The TCBP would be implemented from 2013 to 2016 and would be funded from the AfDB's African Development Fund’s public goods coffers.