The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is seeking to create a unified digital market across the continent through common rules governing payments, data transfers, digital identities and emerging technologies.
AfCFTA Secretary-General Wamkele Mene said Africa’s digital economy could generate more than US$700 billion by 2035, but achieving that potential would depend on removing regulatory barriers that prevent digital businesses from operating seamlessly across national borders.
He made the remarks during a fireside chat, “One Continent, One Click: Creating Africa’s Digital Trade Age,” held at Unstoppable Africa 2026 in New York on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly.
Mene said the economic opportunity spans digital payments, data transfers and processing, mobile banking, health technology and agricultural technology.
However, he noted that the projected value would not materialise automatically if businesses continued to face different rules and requirements across African markets.
A digital business unable to receive cross-border payments, verify customers in another country or legally transfer data across borders could lose opportunities within the expanding continental market.
The AfCFTA Protocol on Digital Trade is intended to address some of these challenges by establishing a common legal framework for digital commerce across participating African countries.
In February 2025, the African Union Assembly adopted eight annexes forming a key part of the Protocol.
The annexes cover rules of origin, digital identities, cross-border digital payments, cross-border data transfers, source code disclosure, online safety and security, emerging and advanced technologies, and financial technology.
These provisions are expected to provide a common framework for businesses dealing with issues such as customer identification, payment settlement, data movement and online consumer protection across borders.
The framework also provides for emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence, reflecting the growing role of technology in Africa’s economic transformation.
The digital trade agenda also places emphasis on expanding participation in the digital economy, particularly among young people and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
A harmonised digital market could allow businesses to reach customers beyond their domestic markets without having to navigate entirely different regulatory systems in every country.
For SMEs, this could widen access to customers, digital payment systems and technology-enabled services across the continent.
The AfCFTA Agreement, which entered into force on May 30, 2019, and commenced trading on January 1, 2021, brings together the 55 African Union member states into a market of about 1.4 billion people.
The combined economy of the bloc is estimated at approximately US$3.4 trillion, while intra-African trade exceeded US$220 billion in 2024, according to the AfCFTA Secretary-General.
The effectiveness of the digital trade framework will ultimately depend on how quickly countries translate the continental rules into national legislation and regulatory practice.
The AfCFTA Secretariat is supporting member states with technical assistance to align their domestic frameworks with the Digital Trade Protocol and its annexes.
For businesses, the objective is to create an environment where a company can sell across African borders, receive payments and provide digital services with greater certainty about the rules governing those transactions.
The push for common digital trade rules therefore forms part of the broader effort to turn Africa’s large consumer and business market into a more integrated continental economy.
