Aid is shrinking. Trade is becoming transactional.
Africa possesses a rare and consequential instrument in the African Continental Free Trade Area—a framework capable of redirecting the continent's economic destiny inward, toward self-reliance and regional strength. Yet instruments require hands that know how to hold them, and the International Trade Centre has found that most of those hands remain uninformed. Speaking at a high-level forum on AfCFTA implementation, ITC Executive Director Pamela Coke-Hamilton warned that with $22 billion in untapped intra-African trade potential and a shrinking window of global goodwill, the continent must urgently invest in the awareness, infrastructure, and regulatory clarity that transform agreements into lived economic reality.
- Africa faces a convergence of external pressures—post-COVID fragility, oil shocks, uncertain U.S. trade preferences, and looming tariffs—that make inward economic integration not a luxury but a survival strategy.
- A striking awareness gap undermines the AfCFTA's promise: only 40% of business leaders say they understand the agreement, and three-quarters report it has changed nothing about how they operate.
- The ITC's One Trade Africa Initiative is working across five regional blocs to map bottlenecks, build firm-level capacity, and push governments toward the regulatory reforms that would make the agreement functional rather than theoretical.
- Priority roadmaps for vaccine manufacturing and electric vehicle battery supply chains are being developed now, with agribusiness serving as the proving ground for whether AfCFTA can move from paper to practice.
- As international aid contracts and trade grows more transactional, African nations are being told plainly: the fundamentals—infrastructure, skilled labor, transparent regulation—are what attract investment, and they cannot be borrowed from outside.
Africa stands at a consequential crossroads. The African Continental Free Trade Area exists as a legal and institutional reality, but whether it becomes an economic one depends on decisions being made right now. At a high-level forum on AfCFTA implementation, Pamela Coke-Hamilton of the International Trade Centre delivered a clear-eyed assessment: the continent is running out of time to make this agreement work, and the people who most need to benefit from it largely don't know it exists.
The stakes are not abstract. The ITC has identified $22 billion in intra-African trade that could be happening but isn't—goods and services African nations could exchange with one another, building regional value chains in sectors where the continent holds genuine advantages: critical minerals, pharmaceuticals, agribusiness. That potential remains locked behind gaps in infrastructure, investment climate, and basic awareness. A continental survey found only 40 percent of business leaders understood AfCFTA well, while three-quarters said it had produced no measurable change in their operations. The agreement's intended beneficiaries—small and medium-sized enterprises that form the backbone of African economies—are largely operating without it.
The ITC's response is the One Trade Africa Initiative, a coordinated effort with the AfCFTA Secretariat and UNIDO spanning five regional economic blocs. The approach works on two tracks simultaneously: helping individual firms meet quality standards and navigate AfCFTA rules, while pressing governments to reform the regulatory and investment environments those firms depend on. Two sectors have been designated immediate priorities—vaccines and electric vehicle batteries—with regional development roadmaps now being drafted in consultation with private sector actors, investors, and policymakers.
Coke-Hamilton's closing message carried the weight of a structural shift already underway. International aid to Africa is declining. Global trade is becoming transactional rather than developmental. African nations cannot afford to wait for external conditions to improve. What draws investment—reliable infrastructure, a skilled workforce, predictable and transparent regulation—must be built from within. The AfCFTA offers the architecture. Whether Africa chooses to inhabit it is the defining economic question of this moment.
Africa sits at a crossroads. The continent has a trade agreement—the African Continental Free Trade Area—that could fundamentally reshape how its economies work. But the window to make it work may be closing, and the people who need to drive it forward often don't understand it at all.
This is the warning Pamela Coke-Hamilton, executive director of the International Trade Centre, laid out at a high-level forum on AfCFTA implementation. The continent faces mounting pressures: the lingering effects of COVID-19, oil supply shocks tied to global conflicts, uncertainty about whether the United States will renew trade preferences for African nations, and the looming threat of American tariff policies. Against these headwinds, the AfCFTA is not just another trade deal. It is, in Coke-Hamilton's framing, Africa's chance to rewrite its relationship with the global economy on its own terms.
The numbers suggest the opportunity is real. The ITC has identified $22 billion in untapped potential for trade within Africa itself—goods and services that African countries could be selling to each other but currently are not. That gap exists because the infrastructure, the awareness, and the investment climate are not yet in place. Close it, and the continent could diversify away from dependence on external markets, build competitive manufacturing and supply chains in sectors where Africa has genuine advantages—critical minerals, pharmaceuticals, agribusiness—and create the kind of regional economic resilience that external shocks cannot easily penetrate.
But here is the problem: almost nobody knows about it. The ITC surveyed business leaders across Africa and found that only 40 percent said they understood the AfCFTA well. Three out of four businesses reported that the agreement has had little to no measurable impact on their operations so far. These are not abstract numbers. They represent thousands of small and medium-sized enterprises—the backbone of African economies—operating in the dark about a framework designed to help them grow.
The ITC is trying to close that gap through what it calls the One Trade Africa Initiative, working in coordination with the AfCFTA Secretariat. The centerpiece is the Africa Trade Competitiveness and Market Access Programme, a joint effort with UNIDO that operates across five regional economic blocs: COMESA, the East African Community, ECCAS, ECOWAS, and SADC. The work is granular. The ITC identifies which value chains have the most potential, maps out the specific bottlenecks that are holding back private sector growth, and then works at two levels simultaneously: helping individual firms meet quality standards and understand the rules of trade under AfCFTA, and pushing governments to improve the regulatory and investment environment that those firms operate in.
Two sectors have been flagged as priorities for immediate development: vaccines and electric vehicle batteries. Regional roadmaps for both are being drawn up now, in consultation with private sector players, nonprofits, investors, policymakers, and international agencies. The work is meant to be a proof of concept. If the AfCFTA can move agribusiness—a sector with deep roots across the continent—from potential to actual impact, then the agreement might finally begin to deliver on what it promises.
Coke-Hamilton's closing argument was blunt. International aid to Africa is shrinking. Trade is becoming more transactional, less driven by development partnerships or goodwill. That reality may not reverse itself. So African countries cannot wait for external support to materialize. They need to focus on what actually attracts investment: quality infrastructure, a workforce with real skills, and a regulatory environment that is predictable and transparent. These are the fundamentals. Without them, the AfCFTA remains an agreement on paper. With them, it becomes the tool that could reshape the continent's economic future.
Citas Notables
The AfCFTA offers a framework to take back control, for the long term. African countries must harness it to diversify markets, reduce external dependence and build competitive regional value chains.— Pamela Coke-Hamilton, ITC Executive Director
African countries must focus on the fundamental requirements that investors look for: quality infrastructure, a skilled workforce and a predictable, transparent regulatory environment.— Pamela Coke-Hamilton, ITC Executive Director
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
Why does the ITC think African SMEs are the key to making this work? Why not focus on the big corporations that already have resources?
Because the big corporations are already integrated into global supply chains. The SMEs are the ones left behind, the ones with untapped capacity. If you want to build regional value chains that actually work, you need the small producers, the local manufacturers, the traders who know their markets. That's where the $22 billion sits—in potential that's being left on the table.
But the survey shows three-quarters of businesses haven't felt any impact yet. Doesn't that suggest the agreement itself is the problem, not just awareness?
It's both. The agreement is real and it's designed well, but without the infrastructure to move goods across borders efficiently, without harmonized investment rules, without businesses actually knowing the rules exist—it's like building a highway nobody knows about. The agreement can't do its job if the people it's meant to help don't understand it.
What happens if Africa doesn't move fast? What's the actual risk?
The window narrows. External shocks keep coming—oil prices, tariff wars, aid drying up. If African economies don't build resilience through regional trade now, they stay vulnerable. And the longer SMEs stay disconnected from each other, the longer they stay dependent on external markets that don't always work in their favor.
The ITC mentions vaccines and electric vehicle batteries as priorities. Why those two?
Because Africa has the raw materials and the demographic need for both. Vaccines require pharmaceutical capacity and cold chain infrastructure—things the continent can build. EV batteries need critical minerals that Africa has in abundance. These aren't sectors where Africa is playing catch-up. These are sectors where Africa could lead, if the regional trade framework actually functions.
So this is really about structural change, not just more trade?
Exactly. It's about whether Africa can move from exporting raw materials to other continents and importing finished goods back, to building the full value chain internally. That's generational change. That's what the AfCFTA is supposed to enable.