Africa’s free-trade project is beginning to move goods under common rules, but origin tests, border costs and uneven implementation still stand in the way of scale, writes Jon Offei-Ansah
Keypoints:
- Twenty-five countries actively apply preferences
- Origin rules decide which products qualify
- Border costs can erase tariff savings
AFRICA’S proposed single market is beginning to take shape—not in summit declarations, but in customs forms, origin documents and the growing number of consignments crossing borders under African Continental Free Trade Area preferences.
The AfCFTA has not created a borderless economy. It is building a rules-based trading area in which qualifying goods can enter participating markets at reduced tariffs, even as national customs systems and border controls remain. Its success will depend on whether those systems become predictable enough for ordinary businesses to use.
How the market works
For a manufacturer, the promise sounds straightforward: a product made in one participating African country should enter another at a lower tariff than a similar product imported from outside the continent.
Mohamed Ali, Director of Trade in Goods and Competition at the AfCFTA Secretariat, calls market access ‘the core, the engine that brings everything together’.
That engine only runs when exporters can meet the practical requirements without becoming trapped by conflicting procedures.
An exporter must identify the product’s customs classification, check that the destination is applying the relevant AfCFTA concession and prove that the goods meet the Rules of Origin.
The exporter must then obtain valid proof of origin—usually an AfCFTA Certificate of Origin authenticated by a designated authority, or an origin declaration where permitted—and present it to customs.
Officials verify the product, documentation and declared origin before applying the preference. Goods that fail the test can face the normal import duty.
The agreement establishing the AfCFTA confirms that preferences apply according to each country’s tariff schedule.
This is not yet a customs union with one external tariff. It is a market being built transaction by transaction as countries gradually align their rules.
Implementation remains uneven
Political support is broad, but implementation remains patchy.
A March 2026 implementation update from South Africa’s Department of Trade, Industry and Competition said 50 countries had ratified the agreement and 48 tariff offers had been approved.
Only 25 countries, however, had started preferential trade across 90 percent of their tariff books.
Ratification does not automatically allow a company to claim a preference. Governments must incorporate tariff schedules into domestic law, notify customs authorities and make the procedures available to traders.
The African Union acknowledged the gap at its February 2026 summit. Its latest AfCFTA implementation decisions praised Nigeria, Ethiopia, Mozambique and Namibia for gazetting provisional tariff schedules.
The AU urged remaining state parties to complete their domestic processes by the end of 2026.
The result is a market that looks continental on paper but remains uneven on the ground.
Early trade proves the concept
More than 5,800 shipments moved under the agreement during the first six months of 2024, according to the AfCFTA Secretariat.
Ali cited the figure in an official trade-in-goods briefing to show that companies are obtaining origin documents, claiming tariff preferences and moving consignments through participating customs systems.
But several thousand shipments across a continent of more than 1.4bn people remain a modest beginning.
The figure proves that the machinery can work. It does not show that the system is routine, affordable or accessible to businesses in every region.
Afreximbank’s Africa in Figures 2025 report estimated that intra-African trade reached $206.6bn in 2024, an increase of 5.4 percent.
Its share of Africa’s total merchandise trade rose from 14.7 percent to 15.3 percent.
That remains modest for a continent hoping to use regional demand as a foundation for industrial growth. Africa Briefing has previously examined why industry continues to lag continental trade ambitions.
Origin rules shape the winners
Rules of Origin determine whether a product is sufficiently African to qualify for an AfCFTA tariff preference.
Goods produced entirely within a participating country may qualify as ‘wholly obtained’. Manufactured products containing imported materials must usually demonstrate sufficient African processing, value addition or a required change in customs classification.
The rules prevent finished products made elsewhere from entering through the country with the lowest external tariff and then being re-exported as African goods.
They must also reflect economic reality.
Many African manufacturers depend on imported machinery, chemicals, fabrics and specialised components. Rules that are too weak may encourage little more than repackaging. Rules that are too strict may exclude genuine African producers.
The challenge is to reward meaningful African production without setting thresholds that existing industries cannot meet.
Tariffs are not the main obstacle
The framework places 90 percent of tariff lines in the main liberalisation category. Seven percent may be treated as sensitive products, while three percent can remain excluded.
Lower duties can make African goods more competitive. Yet a tariff saving can disappear when a truck spends days at a border, a company pays for duplicate inspections or a certificate accepted in the exporting country is rejected at the destination.
‘The AfCFTA is more than just tariff reductions,’ Ali said in an interview published by the International Institute for Sustainable Development.
His point goes to the heart of the agreement: access to a larger market can attract investment only when businesses can actually use that market.
Africa’s trade challenge is also about roads, ports, technical standards, paperwork and cross-border payment systems that remain costly and fragmented.
The AfCFTA’s online non-tariff-barrier mechanism allows businesses to report unexpected restrictions, discriminatory charges and prolonged delays.
Its credibility depends on what follows. Recording a complaint matters only when governments remove the barrier and stop it returning under another name.
Industry and SMEs face the test
The AfCFTA’s deeper purpose is not simply to move more raw commodities. It is to create a market large enough to support processing, industrial investment and regional specialisation.
Cotton grown in one country could be spun in another and turned into clothing elsewhere. Cocoa could move as butter, powder, cosmetics or confectionery rather than mainly as beans.
Similar value chains could emerge around fertiliser, medicines, batteries and vehicle components.
UNECA estimates that effective implementation could make intra-African trade about 45 percent higher by 2045 than it would be without the agreement, adding roughly $275.7bn.
Its Economic Report on Africa 2025 says industry and agri-business are expected to be among the largest beneficiaries.
That outcome requires reliable electricity, affordable finance, efficient transport and factories capable of producing goods at competitive prices and consistent quality.
Large corporations can employ customs specialists and absorb certification costs. Smaller companies often lack working capital, export knowledge and the financial strength to survive delayed payments.
Training can help, as Africa Briefing reported in its coverage of the AfCFTA initiative for African SMEs, but it cannot replace finance or functioning borders.
The real test is whether an ordinary African business can find a buyer, prove origin, finance an order, clear customs and receive payment without the costs swallowing the tariff advantage.
What happens next?
The AfCFTA has passed its first operational test: goods are moving under its rules. It now faces the harder challenge of scale.
In February 2026, the AU expressed concern about slow tariff reductions and ordered a review aimed at eliminating customs duties on eligible intra-African goods.
It also directed the Secretariat to accelerate an interoperable digital single window for customs procedures and trade documentation, building on the continent’s emerging digital trade backbone.
Those decisions could reduce fragmentation, but only when translated into national laws, compatible systems and consistent border practices.
Africa’s single market will not arrive through one dramatic declaration.
It will take shape when a certificate issued in Accra is accepted in Nairobi, when a manufacturer in Lusaka can source components from Casablanca and when a small processor in Kigali can sell in Lagos without losing its profit to paperwork and delays.
The project will have succeeded when an AfCFTA shipment is no longer celebrated as a pioneering event, but treated as an ordinary way of doing business across Africa.
