The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is often described as a market of about 1.4 billion people. It is an impressive figure and captures the scale of the ambition. Businesses, however, do not trade with population figures. They trade with customers they can reach, at prices they can compete with, through supply chains that work.
Almost 50 countries have ratified the agreement, tariff schedules are being implemented, rules of origin have been negotiated, and the framework now extends beyond goods into services, investment, digital trade and competition. The legal framework is taking shape, although the commercial possibilities it creates depend on the economies behind it.
Manufacturing still accounts for only around 10 per cent of GDP in Sub-Saharan Africa. In Vietnam it is closer to 24 per cent, while China remains around a quarter. African countries do not need to produce everything they consume before they can benefit from trade, but the relatively small manufacturing base limits the range and volume of goods that can take advantage of a larger continental market.
There are already signs of what deeper regional trade could support. Manufactured products account for around 46 per cent of intra-African exports, according to the UN Economic Commission for Africa. African countries sell a greater proportion of manufactured and processed products to one another than they do to markets outside the continent. Expanding that trade means competing not only with producers elsewhere in Africa, but also with imports from some of the world’s most efficient manufacturing economies.
Recent comparable business electricity prices put Ghana and Kenya at roughly 17 US cents per kilowatt-hour, against about 8 cents in Vietnam and 6 cents in Indonesia. Where electricity supply is unreliable, firms may also be paying for generators, fuel, maintenance and lost production. Finance and imported inputs add more costs. World Bank research on light manufacturing found that poor logistics could add around 10 per cent to production costs in Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zambia, enough in some cases to erode the advantage of relatively cheap labour.
Lower tariffs help at the border, not with the costs accumulated before reaching it. These costs continue after the product leaves the factory, particularly when the destination is another African country that is poorly connected to the place where it was made.
I once compared the price of flying from Accra to Kinshasa with the price of flying from Accra to Dubai. Dubai was cheaper. It was a single comparison, but the experience will be familiar to many people who travel around Africa. Cities that appear relatively close on a map can be surprisingly expensive or inconvenient to reach from one another.
Goods encounter much the same geography. UNCTAD estimates that weaknesses in transport, energy and ICT infrastructure contribute to African trade costs that are around 50 per cent above the global average. A road may be good until the border. Rail systems often fail to connect where trade needs them to, shipping between African ports can require indirect routes, and border delays add both cost and uncertainty.
For some traders, the calculation goes beyond time and money. In February 2026, seven Ghanaian tomato traders travelling to Burkina Faso to purchase produce were killed in a terrorist attack in Titao as reported by Reuters. The attack was an extreme example of a wider problem. Insecurity across parts of the Sahel and along some other trade routes affects ordinary commercial decisions. Drivers avoid some routes, traders rely on intermediaries and goods take longer journeys. Some transactions simply do not happen.
The goods that do arrive still need buyers. AfCFTA’s 1.4 billion people live across economies with very different levels of income and purchasing power. In 2024, Sub-Saharan Africa accounted for about 16 per cent of the world’s population but 67 per cent of people living in extreme poverty. In many countries, a large share of household spending is absorbed by basic needs. Legal access to millions of additional consumers can therefore represent a considerably smaller commercial market for a particular product.
AfCFTA could help change some of these conditions. Fragmented national markets have long made it difficult for African firms to achieve scale. A factory able to sell regularly across several countries has more reason to expand production than one confined to a relatively small domestic market. Growing trade can also provide more business for transport operators, warehouses and distribution networks. The Pan-African Payment and Settlement System addresses another practical difficulty by making it easier to settle cross-border transactions in African currencies.
Ratifications, tariff schedules, rules of origin and protocols are the easiest parts of AfCFTA progress to count. The economic changes are less straightforward to measure. Falling transport costs, stronger regional supply chains, greater sourcing from other African countries and investment based on access to several markets would tell us more about how much the agreement is changing the decisions businesses make.
Africa has spent years putting in place the legal framework for a continental market. The 1.4 billion figure tells us how many people live within that framework, not how large the market is for the firms expected to use it. Its economic size will depend on how many customers African businesses can reach, serve and compete for at a cost that makes doing so worthwhile.