The Media Line: Africa Has a Free-Trade Deal. Now Comes the Hard Part

Africa Has a Free-Trade Deal. Now Comes the Hard Part

National customs systems, unfinished legal rules and incompatible payment networks still obstruct routine trade across the continent 

By Steven Ganot / The Media Line 

Africa’s attempt to build a continent-wide market is entering a more difficult phase. The political agreement exists; the bargaining over how it will work has moved to customs offices, central banks, regulatory agencies and company boardrooms. 

The African Continental Free Trade Area, known as AfCFTA, is intended to make trade in goods and services easier among African Union (AU) member states. It aims to reduce tariffs and other barriers while giving African businesses a larger home market in which to sell, invest and build supply chains. 

The agreement was signed in Kigali in 2018, entered into force in 2019 and began operating in January 2021. Fifty-four of the AU’s 55 members have signed it, with Eritrea the lone exception. As of July 2026, 49 countries had deposited their instruments of ratification. 

AfCFTA is often described as creating a single African market. That remains an objective rather than a completed reality. The arrangement is a free-trade area, not yet a customs union with a common external tariff or a fully unified regulatory system. National governments retain their own customs services, commercial laws and trade policies toward countries outside the bloc. 

The scale is enormous. The World Bank has described AfCFTA as covering a prospective market of approximately 1.3 billion people with a combined gross domestic product of about $3.4 trillion. Africa’s population has since grown beyond 1.4 billion. 

A Ghanaian food manufacturer, Kenyan clothing producer or Nigerian technology company should, in theory, find it less burdensome to enter neighboring African markets. Middle Eastern firms are watching closely. Gulf investors, logistics companies, banks and technology firms increasingly see Africa not simply as a collection of separate national opportunities, but as a region whose infrastructure and trade rules may gradually become more connected. 

The central question is whether the agreement can survive contact with the border. 

From a Treaty to a Working System 

Reducing tariffs is only one part of AfCFTA. Trade also depends on whether a company can prove where its goods were made, move them through customs, receive payment, comply with national regulations and resolve disputes. 

That is why negotiations did not end when governments signed the agreement. They moved from broad political commitments to the rules and systems needed to make those commitments usable. 

The AfCFTA Secretariat said more than 12,000 certificates of origin had been issued and reported to it by March 2026. A certificate of origin establishes whether goods qualify as originating within the free-trade area and can receive preferential tariff treatment. 

Without that documentation, a shipment may lose the lower tariff rate that makes a cross-border transaction commercially worthwhile. The certificates show that companies and customs authorities are beginning to use AfCFTA, but their issuance does not guarantee an easy border crossing. 

A trader may still encounter incompatible forms, delayed inspections, uncertain procedures or disagreement over what a customs official will accept. Each participating country retains its own customs administration, computer systems and enforcement priorities. 

The focus on customs reflects that obstacle. In August 2026, the AfCFTA Secretariat signed a 20-year, $3.1 billion concession agreement with Nigerian company Bergmans Security Consultants and Supplies Ltd. for a continent-wide customs-modernization project. 

Reuters reported that the project is intended to operate across 50 participating countries. Plans include digital customs tools, electronic information exchange, one-stop border posts, cargo tracking, multilingual portals, data centers and risk-management systems. 

The concession creates a framework for financing and operating the project. It does not by itself ensure that national customs agencies will adopt compatible technology, exchange sensitive information or apply procedures consistently. 

Why Negotiations Continue After Signing 

A treaty can require easier movement of goods. It cannot settle every question about how two customs agencies exchange information, which digital documents they recognize, who bears responsibility when a system fails or what happens when officials suspect fraud. 

Those matters must be negotiated among governments, regulators, border authorities, banks, logistics companies and private businesses. 

Institutional differences complicate the process. One customs agency may be ready to adopt an electronic platform, while another may require legislative changes, security reviews and technical testing. A large company may have the staff to navigate several national systems; a small exporter may not. 

Africa is not a single commercial or administrative culture, just as the Middle East is not. A Kenyan exporter, Nigerian bank, South African manufacturer, Egyptian regulator and UAE logistics company may share an interest in smoother trade while approaching risk, authority and accountability differently. 

The most useful distinction is not between supposedly fixed national characteristics. It is between institutions with different decision-making structures, legal obligations and tolerances for risk. 

A company negotiating across borders needs to know who possesses authority, which agencies must approve a decision, how commitments are recorded and what happens when circumstances change. Broad agreement on the value of trade is easy. Agreement over whose rules apply, who pays for new systems and how much information must be shared is harder. 

Money, Data and Trust 

Payment offers one of the clearest examples. 

An exporter gains little from a tariff reduction if receiving money from a buyer in another country remains costly, slow or uncertain. AfCFTA’s operational architecture consequently includes the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS), developed by the African Export-Import Bank in collaboration with the AU and AfCFTA Secretariat. 

PAPSS allows cross-border payments to be initiated and received in African currencies rather than routinely passing through an intermediary currency such as the US dollar. By July 2026, PAPSS said its network connected 28 African countries, more than 190 commercial banks and financial-technology companies, and 16 payment switches. 

The network’s expansion is meaningful, but technical connectivity is only part of the problem. Central banks and commercial banks must agree on settlement, liquidity, anti-money-laundering controls and the treatment of failed or disputed transactions. Businesses must decide whether the system is sufficiently reliable for real commercial obligations. 

Digital trade raises similar questions. 

The AU adopted the AfCFTA Protocol on Digital Trade in February 2024 and approved its eight annexes in February 2025. They address subjects including digital identities, cross-border payments, data transfers, financial technology, online safety, cybersecurity and advanced technologies. 

National ratification and implementation are still required. Governments must decide how continental commitments fit with their domestic laws on consumer protection, privacy, taxation and financial regulation. 

At the AfCFTA Digital Trade Forum in Lagos on July 1 and 2, 2026, officials, regulators, investors and entrepreneurs focused on moving those commitments into operation. 

The technical language describes ordinary commercial problems. If a Nigerian company sells online to a customer in Kenya, which country’s consumer rules apply? If payment fails, who bears the loss? If customer information is stored elsewhere, which privacy law governs it? If customs officials receive an electronic invoice, how do they verify that it is genuine? 

Such questions determine whether smaller companies can enter foreign markets without assuming legal and financial risks they cannot afford. 

Under a program delivered by the AfCFTA Secretariat and Google, more than 7,500 small and medium-sized businesses in 19 countries received training between November 2025 and June 2026 in cross-border digital trade, cloud technology and artificial intelligence. 

Training cannot remove regulatory fragmentation, but it can help prevent the emerging system from becoming usable only by large companies with specialized legal and technical departments. 

The Unfinished Legal Framework 

Several of AfCFTA’s most difficult subjects remain under development. 

The AU adopted protocols covering investment, competition policy and intellectual-property rights in 2023. The intellectual-property protocol’s eight annexes were adopted in February 2026. Protocols on digital trade and women and youth in trade have also been adopted, but ratification, incorporation into national law and practical implementation remain uneven. 

These instruments sound technical, but their commercial effects are immediate. Investment rules influence how a company is treated after putting money into another country. Competition rules determine what authorities may do when a dominant business blocks rivals. Intellectual property rules affect whether a company can protect a brand, design, or technology outside its home jurisdiction. 

For Middle Eastern businesses considering African investments in logistics, agriculture, renewable energy, financial technology or manufacturing, these rules will help determine the commercial landscape. They also matter to African companies seeking Gulf investment, partners or customers. 

The negotiations contain a persistent tension. Investors want predictable rules and dependable dispute-resolution procedures. Governments want room to protect domestic industries, regulate sensitive sectors and change policy when economic conditions demand it. 

No treaty can eliminate that tension. The implementing rules determine where the balance will fall. 

Negotiating Across Institutions 

AfCFTA shows how cross-border negotiation continues long after leaders sign an agreement. Governments have made the high-level commitment to freer trade. Customs agencies, regulators, banks and companies must now create the practices that allow it to function. 

A customs authority may need to trust a document produced abroad. A bank may need to settle a payment in a currency it rarely handles. A company may need to work with a partner whose decision-making process is unfamiliar. A Gulf investor may discover that an agreement with a local company is only one step in a process involving regulators, financiers, local authorities and communities. 

Misunderstandings can arise without either side acting in bad faith. A foreign company may interpret a lengthy approval process as disinterest. A local partner may regard demands for an immediate decision as evidence that the visitor does not understand who must be consulted. One side may consider an informal understanding sufficient to begin work; the other may require a detailed written agreement. 

Effective preparation requires more than a list of etiquette rules. Negotiators need to determine where authority lies, which approvals are required, how decisions become binding, and how each institution manages changes or disputes. 

AfCFTA’s progress can now be measured through practical tests: whether more countries deposit ratifications and incorporate the protocols into national law; whether businesses use preferential tariffs; whether PAPSS carries more commercial payments; and whether the customs-modernization project reduces clearance times and inconsistent procedures. 

The 20-year customs concession places much of that challenge in unusually concrete form. Its success will depend not simply on installing technology, but on persuading dozens of national customs administrations to exchange data, recognize common documents and surrender some familiar procedures in favor of a system none of them controls alone. 

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