The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is the central pillar of Africa’s long-term integration agenda, intended to rationalize overlapping Regional Economic Communities (RECs), lower trade costs, and unlock continental value chains. This one-page extended abstract distills the key findings of a new study, which I co-authored alongside former Rwandan Prime Minister Pierre Celestin Rwigema and El Hadji Boubacar Touré. The study focuses on two strategic border cases, the Kenya Tanzania (Namanga) border in the East African Community (EAC) and the Mali-Burkina Faso corridor in Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), reflecting on future risks arising from ECOWAS withdrawals and renewed global protectionism.
To fully implement the AfCFTA and realise its tremendous potential, Africa’s regional blocs are a starting foundation, particularly to simplify and reinforce co-operation around member countries’ trade liberalisation. The Namanga border illustrates how AfCFTA-aligned trade facilitation can reduce fragmentation when regional political commitment and institutional capacity are present.
The introduction of one-stop border posts (OSBPs), digital customs systems, and Non-Tarriff Barrier (NTB) reporting mechanisms significantly reduced clearance times from several days to less than 24 hours and lowered transaction costs for both formal and informal traders. These reforms disproportionately benefited small-scale traders, many of whom are female and young, while demonstrating that AfCFTA procedures can scale successful RECs across borders. However, persistent challenges remain, including divergent sanitary and phytosanitary standards and overlapping REC obligations that still increase compliance costs for SMEs.
By contrast, the Mali–Burkina Faso corridor highlights the fragility of regional integration in contexts of political instability and security stress. The 2025 withdrawal of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger from ECOWAS disrupted established trade arrangements, contributing to longer delays, increased informal levies, and higher security-related costs. Trade along this corridor declined by an estimated 15-20% after the three countries’ withdrawals, underscoring how political fragmentation can quickly erode integration gains.
Nonetheless, AfCFTA-linked instruments such as the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) demonstrated resilience by reducing foreign-exchange costs and sustaining limited cross-border exchanges, suggesting that continental mechanisms can partially offset regional shocks.
In addition, these cases show that AfCFTA effectiveness depends less on formal commitments alone and more on implementation capacity, political stability, and alignment between RECs and continental rules. Where borders are supported by strong institutions and cooperative governance (as in the case of Namanga), AfCFTA amplifies existing integration. Where regional cohesion breaks down (Mali–Burkina Faso), AfCFTA acts as a stabilizing but insufficient substitute for regional political coordination.
Thus, AfCFTA implementation faces two interlinked threats. First, the ECOWAS withdrawals signal a risk of deeper regional fragmentation, particularly in the Sahel, where insecurity and geopolitical realignments may further disrupt trade corridors. Second, renewed global protectionism exemplified by the expansion of U.S. tariffs under the Trump administration could reduce external market access and shift policy attention away from consolidating intra-African trade. Together, these trends threaten to undermine confidence in AfCFTA unless proactive mitigation measures are adopted to dissociate political conflict to economic development.
Furthermore, to safeguard AfCFTA gains, national governments and regional institutions should prioritize AfCFTA rules over competing REC obligations, accelerating harmonization of border procedures and rules of origin. Additionally, governments should scale up proven border solutions, particularly OSBPs and digital NTB reporting, using the Namanga experience as a continental reference model. For instance, they could use successful AfCFTA instruments, including PAPSS and simplified trade regimes, to stabilise fragile corridors especially in post-withdrawal contexts such as ECOWAS.
It is also crucial that governments strengthen security and political dialogue around trade corridors, recognizing that integration cannot advance without economic stability. This means development partners strategically, aligning donor support with AfCFTA priorities rather than fragmented REC initiatives. The contrast between the Kenya–Tanzania and Mali–Burkina Faso borders demonstrates that AfCFTA is neither self-executing nor immune to political shocks. Its success will depend on deliberate national choices, targeted investment at borders, free movement, and renewed commitment to continental economic solutions at a time of rising regional fragmentation and global protectionism.
In particular, the return of U.S. tariff measures under a Trump administration risks reducing market access for African exports and diverting policy attention back toward external partners, at a time when consolidating intra-African trade is most critical. These external shocks further expose the limitations of regional economic development frameworks when political conflict and security crises override economic coordination, as seen in parts of the Sahel.
Against this backdrop, the paper concludes with forward-looking recommendations for national governments and regional institutions, emphasizing the need to prioritize AfCFTA implementation over fragmented regional commitments, protect trade corridors from political instability, and invest in practical border-level solutions that can sustain integration even in periods of heightened geopolitical tension. This would ensure that AfCFTA is not only an economic project, but a forward-looking political anchor for Africa’s integration agenda.
Cheick Diarra is Program Manager at Audace Libre Africa Mali and co-author of the new study ‘Defragmenting Africa’s Regional Trade Architecture Through the AfCFTA (ZECLAF): Case Study of Trade Borders Policy’, which you can read here.
The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is the central pillar of Africa’s long-term integration agenda, intended to rationalize overlapping Regional Economic Communities (RECs), lower trade costs, and unlock continental value chains. This one-page extended abstract distills the key findings of a new study, which I co-authored alongside former Rwandan Prime Minister Pierre Celestin Rwigema and El Hadji Boubacar Touré. The study focuses on two strategic border cases, the Kenya Tanzania (Namanga) border in the East African Community (EAC) and the Mali-Burkina Faso corridor in Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), reflecting on future risks arising from ECOWAS withdrawals and renewed global protectionism.
To fully implement the AfCFTA and realise its tremendous potential, Africa’s regional blocs are a starting foundation, particularly to simplify and reinforce co-operation around member countries’ trade liberalisation. The Namanga border illustrates how AfCFTA-aligned trade facilitation can reduce fragmentation when regional political commitment and institutional capacity are present.
The introduction of one-stop border posts (OSBPs), digital customs systems, and Non-Tarriff Barrier (NTB) reporting mechanisms significantly reduced clearance times from several days to less than 24 hours and lowered transaction costs for both formal and informal traders. These reforms disproportionately benefited small-scale traders, many of whom are female and young, while demonstrating that AfCFTA procedures can scale successful RECs across borders. However, persistent challenges remain, including divergent sanitary and phytosanitary standards and overlapping REC obligations that still increase compliance costs for SMEs.
By contrast, the Mali–Burkina Faso corridor highlights the fragility of regional integration in contexts of political instability and security stress. The 2025 withdrawal of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger from ECOWAS disrupted established trade arrangements, contributing to longer delays, increased informal levies, and higher security-related costs. Trade along this corridor declined by an estimated 15-20% after the three countries’ withdrawals, underscoring how political fragmentation can quickly erode integration gains.
Nonetheless, AfCFTA-linked instruments such as the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) demonstrated resilience by reducing foreign-exchange costs and sustaining limited cross-border exchanges, suggesting that continental mechanisms can partially offset regional shocks.
In addition, these cases show that AfCFTA effectiveness depends less on formal commitments alone and more on implementation capacity, political stability, and alignment between RECs and continental rules. Where borders are supported by strong institutions and cooperative governance (as in the case of Namanga), AfCFTA amplifies existing integration. Where regional cohesion breaks down (Mali–Burkina Faso), AfCFTA acts as a stabilizing but insufficient substitute for regional political coordination.
Thus, AfCFTA implementation faces two interlinked threats. First, the ECOWAS withdrawals signal a risk of deeper regional fragmentation, particularly in the Sahel, where insecurity and geopolitical realignments may further disrupt trade corridors. Second, renewed global protectionism exemplified by the expansion of U.S. tariffs under the Trump administration could reduce external market access and shift policy attention away from consolidating intra-African trade. Together, these trends threaten to undermine confidence in AfCFTA unless proactive mitigation measures are adopted to dissociate political conflict to economic development.
Furthermore, to safeguard AfCFTA gains, national governments and regional institutions should prioritize AfCFTA rules over competing REC obligations, accelerating harmonization of border procedures and rules of origin. Additionally, governments should scale up proven border solutions, particularly OSBPs and digital NTB reporting, using the Namanga experience as a continental reference model. For instance, they could use successful AfCFTA instruments, including PAPSS and simplified trade regimes, to stabilise fragile corridors especially in post-withdrawal contexts such as ECOWAS.
It is also crucial that governments strengthen security and political dialogue around trade corridors, recognizing that integration cannot advance without economic stability. This means development partners strategically, aligning donor support with AfCFTA priorities rather than fragmented REC initiatives. The contrast between the Kenya–Tanzania and Mali–Burkina Faso borders demonstrates that AfCFTA is neither self-executing nor immune to political shocks. Its success will depend on deliberate national choices, targeted investment at borders, free movement, and renewed commitment to continental economic solutions at a time of rising regional fragmentation and global protectionism.
In particular, the return of U.S. tariff measures under a Trump administration risks reducing market access for African exports and diverting policy attention back toward external partners, at a time when consolidating intra-African trade is most critical. These external shocks further expose the limitations of regional economic development frameworks when political conflict and security crises override economic coordination, as seen in parts of the Sahel.
Against this backdrop, the paper concludes with forward-looking recommendations for national governments and regional institutions, emphasizing the need to prioritize AfCFTA implementation over fragmented regional commitments, protect trade corridors from political instability, and invest in practical border-level solutions that can sustain integration even in periods of heightened geopolitical tension. This would ensure that AfCFTA is not only an economic project, but a forward-looking political anchor for Africa’s integration agenda.
Cheick Diarra is Program Manager at Audace Libre Africa Mali and co-author of the new study ‘Defragmenting Africa’s Regional Trade Architecture Through the AfCFTA (ZECLAF): Case Study of Trade Borders Policy’, which you can read here.
Cheick Diarra