Addis Ababa - Egypt's President 'Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi' affirmed Egypt's full support to efforts exerted to achieve African economic integration and accelerate negotiations on launching a continental free trade zone in accordance with the decision of the 2015 Johannesburg Summit. Addressing a closed session of the African Summit, Sisi said Egypt was keen to host the summit of the three economic groupings in Sharm El Sheikh in June 2015, which launched a trilateral free trade zone to serve as a fundamental pillar that can be built upon in the effort to establish a continental free trade zone. He called for maximizing the use of outstanding economic opportunities available to the African continent by increasing the domestic investment and improving the intra-African trade rates. Establishing a continental free trade zone will be a pivotal step on the way to promoting intra-African trade and pushing forward the development process in Africa to achieve objectives set in the African Union's Agenda 2063, Sisi said. Sisi also hailed a preliminary report on the AU reform presented by Rwanda's President Paul Kagame. He added that Egypt attaches great importance to the issue of structural and administrative reform of the African Union, its institutions and its commission for its direct impact on the AU's ability to achieve the common interests of the African countries.
