AfCFTA Digital Trade Protocol: Will it address e-commerce in the African context?

The Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Digital Trade Protocol has been ratified at the African Union (AU) Summit in Ethiopia. 

This represents one of the most pivotal developments for continent-wide digital trade in Africa. What this protocol offers is a framework for Africans to do business with markets that were inaccessible for one reason or another in the digital sphere.

Intra-Africa Trade will now come in step with developments that started across the rest of the world at the turn of the 21st Century. The undeniable prevalence of e-commerce necessitated trade agreements that included the peculiar nature of how goods and services are traded online. 

An example of this was the inclusion of e-commerce in the EU-CARIFORUM Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) that was signed in 2008, which was the first time online trade had been mentioned in a policy document for a single trading block.