African leaders, financiers, and businesses are being urged to join forces and accelerate intra-continental trade, unlocking shared prosperity across the region through deeper economic integration.
The experts who spoke at the African Trade Conference 2026, held in Cape Town, South Africa, recently stated that the building blocks of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) are taking shape to deepen intra-African trade.
However, they noted that there is still a great deal of practical work to be done, including regulatory harmonization, logistics infrastructure development, and the establishment of a trade financing system to unlock Africa’s full trade potential.
Roosevelt Ogbonna, chief executive officer and managing director at Access Bank, which hosted the event, in his welcome address, said progress had been made in advancing African trade since last year’s edition of the conference.
“There has been the establishment of value chains across various business sectors,” he said.
“Some African brands are now being exported locally and globally, and several technology platforms developed in Africa are alleviating the friction in payments and logistics systems that previously hindered trade on the continent,” he noted.
However, he identified high cost of finance, fragmented payment systems, infrastructure gaps and limited trade information as key constraints affecting businesses seeking to operate across African borders.
He added that trade is concentrated in only some corridors and markets on the continent.
“Many of these improvements are concentrated in specific markets and corridors, and that is not good enough if we are to truly unlock the potential of Africa’s trade,” he said.
“Let us build an Africa that is not just open for business but also uniquely open for African businesses,” Ogbonna added.
In his presentation, Tolu Oyekan, managing director and partner, Boston Consulting Group, noted that Africa has all it takes to position itself in the global trade.
According to him,while many other markets are experiencing structural population decline, the African market comprises 1.5 billion people and AfCFTA is the world’s largest free trade area.
He noted that while Africa engages in trade, it extracts too little value, saying about 77 percent of its exports consist of primary commodities, and the ratio of trade to GDP is volatile and low compared to other regions.
He added that the continent’s share of global trade is very low, at only three percent.
Oyekan pointed out that it is not all doom for the continent, saying that there are beginnings of a viable light manufacturing sector in many trade corridors, growth in pharmaceutical production capacity, and initiatives to process some of the export commodities.
Nevertheless, he said, in an environment of escalating geopolitical tensions, currency volatility, climate risk, and increased market volatility, Africa’s fragmented markets become very expensive for businesses.
Oyekan said that in this environment, accessibility and predictability in trade matters, as well as transparency.
He said that with global trade becoming increasingly unpredictable, the solution lies in deepening intra-African trade and building scale on the continent before tackling the global market.
He argued that accelerating trade across the continent creates a compelling economic case for major infrastructure investments, noting that as trade volumes grow, the viability of key projects improves, attracting crucial investment and driving growth.
“Trade creates the economic case for infrastructure. It generates the revenue base that sustains it and attracts the capital that finances it,” he said. “Trade becomes the catalyst for the Africa that we want to see,” he added.
In his keynote address, Kwabena Ayirebi, managing director of banking operations Africa Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), Kwabena Ayirebi, MD of Banking Operations at Africa Export-Import Bank, said that intra-African trade accounts for only 16 percent of total trade, far below Asia’s 59 percent and Europe’s 62 percent.
He emphasised that the continent can no longer rely on foreign banks for funding, as these banks invariably prioritise the interests of their own country’s client companies.
Ayirebi mentioned that Africa Export-Import Bank has already created a funding facility focused on boosting intra-African trade, which now constitutes 22 percent of the bank’s funding disbursements.
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