Rabat – Eight years after the signing of the African Continental Free Trade Area agreement in Kigali, and seven years after it entered into force, the largest trade integration project on the continent is still stuck between political commitment and slow implementation, while the cost of delay on intra-trade, manufacturing, services, investment and food security is expanding.
During a session within the fourth session of the Marrakesh Parliamentary Economic Forum for the Euro-Mediterranean and Arab Gulf region, African experts and officials called for accelerating the full implementation of the agreement, warning of the losses incurred by the continent and its people as a result of the continued impasse.
The agreement aims to enable the free flow of goods and services across the continent, and strengthen Africa’s position in global trade, while estimates indicate that the African Continental Free Trade Area can raise the size of the African economy to $29 trillion by 2050.
Commercial exchange
The African Trade Report for 2026 issued by the African Export-Import Bank showed a growth in commodity trade by 6.1%, reaching a total value of about $1.5 trillion, and intra-African trade recorded a growth of 5.5% to about $213.8 billion.
However, intra-regional trade still does not exceed 15% of the continent’s total trade, at a time when Africa records high proportions of its foreign trade with Asia and Europe.
Mauritanian economist Sayed Al-Khair Amr said, in a comment to Al Jazeera Net, that the volume of trade exchange between African countries is still very modest, and does not fit with the huge capabilities of the continent.
He added that these indicators reveal the excessive dependence of most African countries on trading partners outside the continent, which limits their ability to build strong regional value chains and achieve greater self-sufficiency.
Amr believes that improving trade data is still far from ambitions, especially since activating the free zone agreement could boost intra-trade by more than 52% once import duties are completely abolished.
In an interview with Al Jazeera Net, the head of the African Center for Strategic Studies and Digitization, Rachid Sari, warned of the repercussions of not fully activating the African Continental Free Trade Area agreement, stressing that the continent, despite its enormous potential, is missing out on historic opportunities for growth and integration.
Sari said that Africa, despite its large area and possessing huge reserves of critical minerals such as cobalt, lithium and gas, its contribution to the global economy is still meager and does not exceed 1%.
Broken files
Basic files within the African Free Zone Agreement are still not fully implemented, including the lack of complete resolution of the rules of origin in vital sectors such as cars and textiles, the delay of countries in integrating customs dismantling schedules into their national border systems, and the continuation of negotiations on second and third phase protocols such as trade in services, investment and e-commerce.
In an interview with Al Jazeera Net, the international expert in social and economic development and Vice President of the Moroccan Council of Councillors, Hassan Haddad, lists a number of overlapping factors behind the delay in the full activation of the African Free Trade Area Agreement, including:
- Weak infrastructure and logistical connectivityThe cost of transporting goods within Africa is one of the highest in the world, and in many cases it is easier and cheaper to export an African product to Europe than to a neighboring African country.
- Non-tariff barriersEven when customs duties decrease, administrative obstacles remain, the complexity of customs procedures, and differences in technical and health standards between countries.
- Fear of competitionSome countries fear that opening markets will weaken their emerging local industries or lose part of their customs revenues.
- Poor financial integration: Payment and transfer systems between African countries remain complex and expensive, limiting intra-African trade.
- Slow implementation of national reformsThe agreement was signed politically, but its success requires harmonizing national laws and regulations, a path that requires time and continued political will.
Sayed Al-Khair Amr adds other obstacles that prevent the full implementation of the Kigali Agreement, which are:
- Security fears and political unrestSome regions of the continent are witnessing armed conflicts and security and political tensions, which creates an unstable environment that doubles the risks for investors and weakens confidence in implementing the agreement.
- Bureaucratic obstacles and complex proceduresSuch as the multiplicity of licenses, the difference in technical standards between countries, the slowness of customs transactions, as well as the challenges of administrative corruption that hinder the flow of goods and the flexibility of services.
- Lack of economic diversificationMost African economies depend on exporting raw materials and primary goods and importing manufactured goods, a similarity that reduces opportunities for integration and trade exchange, and makes the continent more vulnerable to global price fluctuations.
- Lack of funding and institutional capacityThe process of activating the agreement requires huge investments in infrastructure and the development of institutions capable of implementing new laws and regulations, which is what many countries that already suffer from a lack of funding and expertise lack.
Rachid Sari points out another problem, which is Africa’s continued dependency on the outside, saying that the continent “is still linked to the old colonizer through agreements that have depleted its raw and raw materials, or through partnerships with new powers such as China, Russia, and the United States.”
He believes that the focus on holding major international summits, whether African-Russian, African-Chinese, or African-American, reflects a trend that places cooperation with abroad at the forefront of the scene, while real progress for the continent can only be achieved through intra-internal cooperation.
Inactivation invoice
The continued failure to fully implement the agreement is causing the African continent vast economic and social losses.
According to the estimates of the “African Future” report for the year 2026, the continuation of the current path of trade exchange and delaying the comprehensive activation of the agreement may cause Africa to lose huge gains by 2043, the most prominent of which are:
- Loss of about $110.3 billion in potential added value in the manufacturing sector.
- Missing an additional growth opportunity worth $397.6 billion in the services sector.
- The share of African exports remains at a weak rate, not exceeding 3.5% of total global exports.
Hassan Haddad believes that this situation means the continued fragmentation of the African market into dozens of small and dispersed markets, pointing out that the continent is thus missing a historic opportunity to create a unified and structured market that includes more than 1.3 billion people, which weakens its negotiating and economic position.
He added that this fragmentation weakens the ability to attract major foreign investments that are looking for broad and stable markets.
Haddad warned against the continuation of the traditional economic pattern, stressing that the absence of trade integration perpetuates excessive reliance on the export of primary raw materials, at the expense of developing industrial value chains within the continent.
Rachid Sari said, “85% of Africa’s exports are currently heading outside the continent, at a time when the African countries themselves could have benefited from them.”
He added that this situation represents a “serious loss of growth opportunities,” noting that full activation of the agreement “would have increased the volume of intra-trade by an additional 276 billion dollars, and increased exports by more than 246 billion dollars, but these gains remain a dead letter in the absence of activation.”
Regarding the food security file, Sari pointed out that 65% of arable land in Africa is unexploited, adding that the ambition was for the continent to be able to secure its own food, but about 30% of its population lives in extreme poverty under the current situation.
Expected gains
Full activation of the Continental Free Trade Agreement could achieve broad gains for Africa, and in the view of Sayed El-Khair Amr, this could yield strategic results, including:
- Multi-billion dollar unified market: Creating a unified market that includes more than one billion consumers, with a gross domestic product of approximately $3.4 trillion.
- Attracting foreign investmentsTransforming the huge single market into an attractive destination for global capital looking for integrated markets, which contributes to the transfer and localization of technology.
- Safety valve for food securityFacilitating the movement of agricultural products and livestock between countries ensures filling the food deficit internally and reduces imports from other continents in times of international crises.
Rashid Sari believes that if intra-trade was preserved and encouraged, the continent might have witnessed the adoption of a new monetary system and talk about a unified currency, which would relieve countries of part of the burden of importing hard currency, raise the volume of investments, and reduce unemployment rates by more than 10%.
For Hassan Haddad, the free trade zone is a strategic project to transform Africa from a group of dispersed markets into an integrated economic power, so the real challenge is no longer in signing the agreement, but in moving from the stage of political commitment to practical implementation on the ground.
