Despite widespread political commitment to the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), majority of African countries are yet to begin actual trade under the framework, a new implementation report on Nigeria’s participation in the continental agreement has revealed.
The report sighted by our correspondent indicates that even though 54 out of the 55 member states of the African Union have signed the AfCFTA agreement, significantly fewer have completed the legal and operational steps required to commence trading under the initiative.
According to the document, less than 47 countries have ratified the agreement through their national legislatures, a critical requirement for domestication of the trade pact and participation in the framework. Even among those that have ratified it, only a few countries that are currently operationally ready to trade under the AfCFTA system.
The report notes that the disparity between countries that have signed the agreement and those that are actually able to trade under it, reveals the complexity of establishing a continent-wide trade framework involving different regulatory systems, customs procedures and institutional capacities.
AfCFTA, which officially commenced trading on January 1, 2021, was designed to create a single African market for goods and services, promote industrialisation and significantly increase intra-African trade. However, progress in actual trading has remained gradual due to regulatory challenges and varying levels of readiness among member states.
Checks by our correspondent revealed that to accelerate implementation, the AfCFTA Secretariat introduced the Guided Trade Initiative (GTI), a pilot mechanism intended to facilitate early trading among countries that have met the minimum technical and regulatory requirements under the agreement.
Through the initiative, participating countries are able to test cross-border trade procedures, including customs processes, export documentation and rules of origin requirements, using selected goods across participating markets.
Nigeria joined the second phase of the initiative after initially missing the first cohort of participating countries due to readiness requirements. The report stated that efforts were subsequently intensified by the Nigeria AfCFTA Coordination Office to ensure the country met the conditions necessary to participate in the programme.
As part of the preparations, Nigerian officials undertook peer-learning visits to early implementers of the initiative, including Ghana and Rwanda, in order to study their implementation models and identify best practices that could support Nigeria’s own participation in the continental trade framework.
The report further observed that AfCFTA implementation remains complex and incremental, taking place within an environment characterised by fiscal constraints, evolving continental rules, institutional capacity gaps and the need to align federal and sub-national trade systems.
Despite these challenges, the report stated that Nigeria has continued to advance its participation in the agreement through strengthened institutional coordination, increased engagement with the private sector and the development of trade facilitation measures aimed at positioning local businesses to take advantage of emerging opportunities under the continental market.
