AfCFTA successfully transpose its rules of origin into the HS 2022

Écrit par Guillaume Gérout Suominen

The African Union Assembly of Heads of State and Government directed the AfCFTA Secretariat to prepare the necessary instruments for transposing Appendix IV on the product-specific rules of origin. After several years of technical support, the AfCFTA State Parties adopted the transposed instruments during the 2025 Ordinary AU Summit.


The days following the transposition workshop were dedicated to the initial drafting of thetransposition report. Due to the length and technicality of the matter, the report drafting isstill ongoing at the date of writing of the present report and is expected to still require severalworking, including the back-and-forth communications with the AfCFTA Secretariat and theWCO. The output of the transposition exercise itself is appended in an excel format forreference.

Guillaume Gérout Suominen

Guillaume is a specialist in trade negotiations and rules of origin, currently working with the EU-WCO Rules of Origin Africa Programme. He has consulted for international organisations and partners to support the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) negotiations and implementation.

His clients have included organizations such as the International Trade Centre (ITC), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), International Organization for Migration (IOM), Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the International Southern African Development Community (SADC) Secretariat, and the governments of Madagascar and Tunisia, among others. He has notably served as a trade policy advisor to the AfCFTA Secretariat, focusing specifically on rules of origin.

His professional experience includes negotiating on behalf of the Seychelles government for several trade agreements, including the COMESA Free Trade Agreement (FTA), the COMESA-SADC-EAC Tripartite FTA, and the Eastern and Southern Africa-European Union Economic Partnership Agreement (ESA-EU EPA) related to rules of origin. Additionally, he represented the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) as an observer during AfCFTA negotiations from 2016 to 2020.

He is a PhD candidate in the Doctoral Programme in Political, Societal, and Regional Changes at the University of Helsinki.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/guillaumegerout/