Rep. Benjamin Kalu, Deputy Speaker of Nigeria’s House of Representatives, and ECOWAS Parliamentarian, says the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is the strategic engine that will catapult Africa’s economic development.
He stated this in his contribution at the ECOWAS Parliament’s First 2026 Extraordinary Session and Seminar, which began on Monday in Abuja.
The seminar is themed: “Deepening Regional Integration through the AfCFTA: Opportunities and Challenges for Expanding Intra-Community Trade.”
The regional MP canvassed intra-African and intra-West African trade, stressing that the continent must strive to trade with itself to survive under the AfCTA dispensation.
He said that while intra-African trade currently stands at 220.3 billion dollars (16 per cent rise), intra-ECOWAS trade remains at just 11.5 per cent of the region’s total trade.
This, he said, was in spite of the ECOWAS sub-region being the second largest contributor to intra-African trade total, and having a 3.4 trillion dollars market potential.
“In today’s geopolitical climate, AfCFTA is no longer just a trade agreement; it has become the strategic engine that must power Africa’s industrial resilience and survival.
“In a world of fragmenting global supply chains, Africa must trade with itself to thrive.
“We are talking about a 3.4 trillion dollars market potential, yet we still struggle to move a truck from Lagos to Abidjan,” Kalu said.
The lawmaker solicited bridging the gap between high-level aspirations and regional reality, calling for a transition from the diplomacy of “paper integration” to the tangible impact of “functional integration.”
Kalu called for relentless focus on bridging regional infrastructural development and implementation gaps, noting, for instance, that the Abidjan-Lagos Corridor, the backbone of ECOWAS economy, “remains an unfinished promise.”
“Currently, it is not just the potholes that cost us; it is the administrative friction.
“We can build a six-lane highway, but if a truck spends 14 hours at a border due to redtape, that highway is just an expensive parking lot.
“We don’t just need a mechanism to report Non-Tariff Barriers (NTBs); We need a regional body with actual enforcement powers to penalise the bureaucratic delays that strangle our supply chains,” he emphasised.
According to him, while physical infrastructure and administrative inefficiencies pose even great challenges, functional integration is key to ECOWAS trade expansion and implementing AfCFTA.
On ECOWAS monetary integration, he advocated the adoption of the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS), describing it as a functional, pragmatic immediate solution to current regional trade payment challenges.
The MP underscored the urgent need for a digital switch from Eco, the ECOWAS single currency system ambition, which has been lingering for decades without success, to PAPSS.
“For decades, we have chased the dream of a single currency (the Eco). It is time for a reality check. Total macroeconomic convergence is a 20th-century mirage.
“Instead, we need to strategically direct our energy toward the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS).
“The Reality is that PAPSS provides some of the key benefits of a single currency; including instant settlement in local currencies, without the loss of national sovereignty,” he said.
The lawmaker stressed that the digital switch would also eliminate what he described as dollar-dependency, which he said costs Africa five billion dollars annually in transaction fees.
“Why wait in perpetuity for a shared banknote when we can solve the payment problem today with a digital switch?
“Let us stop debating whose face goes on a currency that does not exist and start connecting central banks to a system that already works.
“By prioritising the Guided Trade Initiative (GTI), we make the AfCFTA a reality for the manufacturer in Aba, the agro-processor in Cote d’Ivoire and the small-scale trader in The Gambia,” Kalu added.
