A few days ago, I caught myself reflecting again on something that has bothered me for years, though I never quite named it. I can stroll into an ASDA or Tesco in London and pick up Kenyan tea without thinking twice. Yet I struggle to find the same tea in Prince Ebeano or FoodCo in Lagos. How does that make sense? Think about that. A product grown a five hour flight away is more accessible in Europe than within Africa itself.
That small, everyday inconvenience captures a much bigger truth: Africa trades more comfortably with the rest of the world than with itself. And that truth has shaped the earlier articles in this series, where we lingered on diagnosis – the frictions, the structural bottlenecks, the political incentives and the institutional gaps that keep intra-African trade far below its potential.
But diagnosis has its limits. At some point, we must pivot from describing what constrains us to imagining what a deliberately engineered future could look like. Today’s piece marks that shift. And to make that pivot honestly, we must start by confronting the political economy forces that determine whether the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) becomes a transformative project or another beautifully written agreement that never escapes the pages of paper it is written on.
The AfCFTA is not a technical exercise. It is a political project
It is tempting to treat the AfCFTA as a technocratic endeavour: tariff schedules, rules of origin, customs harmonisation, digital platforms. But beneath all the spreadsheets and protocols sits something far more consequential: a quiet renegotiation of power.
Trade integration rearranges who benefits from what, who controls which rents and who gets to shape the rules of the game. It shifts influence away from some actors and toward others. It creates new winners, threatens old ones and forces governments to make choices that are as political as they are economic.
This is why implementation has been uneven. Not because African states lack ambition. It is because more often than not ambition collides with domestic political realities.
Who wins in a fully functioning AfCFTA?
A genuinely integrated African market would create a new class of winners. Some obvious will be, some less so.
1. Competitive firms with regional ambitions
Companies that can scale, innovate and operate across borders stand to gain the most. They get access to a market of 1.4 billion people, diversified demand and the ability to build regional value chains that finally break the tyranny of exporting raw materials.
2. Consumers
Lower prices, more choice, better quality. Consumers are the quiet winners of integration, even though they rarely feature in political debates.
3. Reform‑minded governments
Countries willing to modernise customs, digitise processes and invest in logistics will attract investment and become regional hubs. Integration rewards seriousness.
4. Youth and MSMEs plugged into regional ecosystems
A larger market means more room for new entrants especially in services, digital trade, creative industries and agrifood processing.
These gains are real but so are the people who stand to lose.
Who resists, and why?
Resistance is not irrational. It is often perfectly logical once you understand the incentives.
1. Protected domestic industries
Firms that have survived behind tariff walls fear competition. They worry and sometimes rightly, that they will be swallowed by more efficient regional players.
2. Bureaucratic actors who benefit from opacity
Where border processes are slow, discretionary, or unpredictable, someone is benefiting. Integration threatens those rent seeking behaviours.
3. Political elites tied to import monopolies
In several countries, politically connected groups control import licences, distribution chains or logistics corridors. A more open market dilutes their power.
4. Governments anxious about revenue loss
Tariffs still account for a significant share of government revenue in many states. Removing them feels risky, even if the long‑term gains outweigh the short‑term pain. Seeing these incentives clearly isn’t cynicism. It is simply being honest about how politics works. You cannot design a future you do not understand.
The AfCFTA will succeed only if it aligns interests and incentives
The AfCFTA’s architects have done the hard work of negotiation. The next phase is the tough one: getting vested interests and political incentives to line up with continental ambition. This requires three key shifts.
1. Make the benefits visible and immediate
Governments respond to what they can see. If integration feels abstract, it will remain a low priority. But if a country sees new factories, new jobs, new investments and new tax revenue linked directly to AfCFTA reforms, political will will strengthen. Pilot trade corridors, fast‑track customs lanes and early success stories matter more than another round of communiqués.
2. Reduce the political cost of reform
Countries need support to manage the transition, especially those worried about revenue loss or industrial disruption. Compensation mechanisms, targeted industrial policies and regional adjustment funds can soften the blow. Integration cannot be built on sacrifice alone. It must offer a pathway for every country to win.
3. Build coalitions of domestic winners
The AfCFTA will advance only when its natural champions (exporters, MSMEs, logistics operators, fintechs, farmers’ associations, youth entrepreneurs, etc) become vocal political actors. Trade integration is not driven by treaties. It is driven by constituencies.
The future we could deliberately engineer
If Africa chooses to design its future rather than drift into it, the AfCFTA could become the most transformative political project since independence. But that future will not emerge automatically. It must be built.
Imagine a continent where Kenyan tea is easier to buy in Lagos than in London. Customs clearance takes minutes, not days. Regional value chains flourish, linking farmers in northern Ghana to processors in Côte d’Ivoire and distributors in Senegal. A continent where ports compete on efficiency, not on who controls the concession. Cross‑border payments that are instant, allowing MSMEs to trade without fear of delays or currency traps. A continent where standards are harmonised, enabling African products to move freely from Cairo to Cape Town, where logistics costs fall, unlocking new manufacturing hubs in landlocked countries. Youth‑led firms scale regionally, not just nationally.
This isn’t wishful thinking. It is what deliberate design can achieve. And design begins with understanding the political economy forces that shape individual, the collective and institutional behaviour.
Circling back to that cup of tea
And so we circle back to that moment in a London supermarket aisle, me reaching for Kenyan tea that should have been just as easy to buy in Lagos. It is a small thing, but it says a lot about where we are. Now imagine a different scene. I walk into a supermarket in Lagos, any supermarket, and the shelves are lined with Kenyan tea, Rwandan coffee, Ivorian chocolate, Senegalese dried fish, South African wine, Ghanaian plantain chips, Ethiopian spices. Not as rare finds, but as ordinary African goods moving through efficient regional value chains, backed by predictable rules, modern logistics and payment systems that actually talk to each other. A continent trading with itself as naturally as it trades with the rest of the world. A market where African products feel at home on African shelves. That is the future the AfCFTA makes possible, if we choose to build it.
