Background and rationale
Africa’s green industrialisation agenda sits at the intersection of the energy transition, demand for critical minerals, climate-related trade measures, digitalisation and renewed industrial policy in major economies. For African states, the central question is how to move from exporting raw materials and importing finished technologies towards productive capacity, local value addition, regional value chains and green employment.
Technology transfer is central to this shift. For African industrialisation, it must include access to relevant technologies, the capacity to adapt and maintain them, the skills to use them productively, the ability to innovate locally, the infrastructure to deploy them at scale and the legal, financial and investment frameworks that make technology diffusion commercially viable and development-oriented.
The WTO framework remains relevant, but its contribution to technology transfer has been limited and uneven. TRIPS Article 66.2 imposes a specific obligation on developed-country members to promote technology transfer to least-developed-country members, but its implementation relies on self-reported programmes and does not cover all African economies that could anchor green manufacturing. TRIPS Article 7 provides a broader interpretive basis, while WTO rules on trade-related investment measures, subsidies, services, and intellectual property govern the use of local-content measures, investment incentives, supplier development, and technology partnerships.
At the continental level, the AfCFTA offers more direct tools. Its Investment, Intellectual Property Rights and Digital Trade Protocols can help link investment, innovation, digital systems and regional value chains to productive capability. These protocols are not yet in force and require ratification. Their significance lies in the opportunities they create for African states to shape investment, IP, and digital trade disciplines to support technology diffusion, supplier development, and green industrialisation. Yet scale will only matter if countries align these tools with standards, infrastructure, logistics, skills and financing in their priority sectors.
The Event
APRI's Just Green Technology Transitions Programme, in partnership with the Trade Negotiations & Investment Forum (TNIF), the Forum on Trade, Environment, & the SDGs (TESS), and SEATINI Uganda, is hosting this webinar. The event seeks to explore ways to strengthen the multilateral trading system to facilitate technology transfer and provide the policy flexibility needed for African industrial strategies. A key focus will be on how African nations can maximise existing opportunities to acquire and localise essential technologies. The session will analyse the collective role of the AfCFTA's digital trade, investment, and intellectual property protocols in driving this transition and examine how WTO digital trade and e-commerce regulations will influence Africa's positioning in green technology sectors.
