AfCFTA Chokepoints: One Stop Border Posts & Their Impact on Intra-African Trade

The Africa Continental Free Trade Area's (AfCFTA) effectiveness will come down to how fast the continent can roll out its One Stop Border Post program.

Trade in Africa has been largely dominated by 8 trade unions formed between different countries on the continent. SADC, COMESA, and EAC form the Tripartite Free Trade Area (TFTA) which combined constitute 53% of AU membership and a combined GDP of US$1.4 Trillion which is 60% of the African continent's combined GDP. It also had a combined estimated population of 800 million.

The moving parts in the AfCFTA

AfCFTA: the body and its constituents

The whole premise behind the AfCFTA is to develop a continent-wide Free Trade Area across Africa where member states form an agreement between two or more countries to reduce barriers to imports and exports or the movement of goods and services across borders.

SADC, COMESA ECOWAS, and EAC are examples of these multilateral trade agreements within different African regions. The AfCFTA seeks to consolidate all of these into one unified free trade area. In as much as it will be the largest free trade area by virtue of population, its contribution to the value of global trade stands at 2%.

As of August 2023 only 1 African country, Eritrea, is yet to sign the AfCFTA agreement. 47 of the 54 signatories (87%) have deposited their instruments of AfCFTA ratification. On 7 October 2022, the AfCFTA Secretariat launched the AfCFTA Guided Trade Initiative in Accra to allow for commercially meaningful trade under the Agreement to commence for EIGHT (8) participating countries: Cameroon, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Tunisia, representing the five regions of Africa. This initiative is being used to pilot the operational, institutional, legal, and trade policy environment under the AfCFTA.