AfCFTA: More Than a Trade Agreement
The African Continental Free Trade Area is best understood not simply as a contemporary trade agreement, but as part of a much longer African journey towards economic integration.
Professor Pumela Msweli's work locates AfCFTA within more than two millennia of African trade, tracing commercial networks from the Kingdom of Aksum and the trans-Saharan trade routes to Mapungubwe, Great Zimbabwe and the trading systems connecting Southern and Eastern Africa. It then examines how colonialism, changing monetary systems, regional economic communities, the establishment of the Organisation of African Unity, the Abuja Treaty and ultimately the African Union shaped Africa's modern integration project.
At its core, AfCFTA seeks to deepen economic integration by progressively reducing barriers to trade, facilitating trade in goods and services, strengthening cooperation and establishing the institutional mechanisms required for a continental market. Professor Msweli's analysis also places these ambitions within the broader aspirations of Agenda 2063 for a prosperous, integrated and united Africa.
Importantly, the work does not treat economic integration as an uncontested process. It considers the historical, political and economic forces that continue to shape regional integration and highlights competing perspectives on whether existing approaches sufficiently address Africa's colonial and post-colonial economic structures.
