The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is working to remove barriers to cross-border digital commerce by promoting interoperable national systems, common rules and stronger digital skills across the continent, according to Gilberto Antonio, chief technical adviser at the AfCFTA Secretariat.
The effort is aimed at helping businesses, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises, make and receive payments across African borders more quickly while reducing transaction costs and other obstacles that currently limit digital trade.
“Digital trade goes beyond e-commerce,” Antonio said in an AfCFTA podcast. He said digital trade covers commercially enabled activities including digital payments, data flows and digital identity, with e-commerce forming only a subset of the broader digital economy.
Africa has made significant progress in domestic digital payments, particularly through mobile money in countries including Ghana and Kenya, but cross-border transactions remain more difficult, Antonio said.
Fees and delays remain major obstacles. Traditional bank transfers can take more than one to three days and, in some cases, payments between African countries may be routed through correspondent banks outside the continent before reaching the recipient, he said.
The AfCFTA Digital Trade Protocol is intended to address some of those challenges by establishing binding provisions covering areas such as interoperability and other aspects of digital commerce.
The Secretariat is pursuing a two-track approach, Antonio said. One involves implementing the legally binding Digital Trade Protocol, while the other involves initiatives with partners focused on digital skills and platforms that can enable interoperability between national systems.
The push comes as African businesses increasingly rely on digital tools to conduct transactions, while national systems remain fragmented. Antonio identified digital skills, internet connectivity, particularly in rural areas, and interoperability between national systems as key challenges to the expansion of digital trade.
The protocol has also received political backing from the presidents of Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria, according to Antonio, while businesses and SMEs have expressed support for faster implementation.
For SMEs, the agreement is intended to support inclusion in what the Secretariat describes as a single African digital market. Antonio said the private sector should remain a major focus because businesses, rather than governments, ultimately conduct trade, although governments have a central role in regulating markets and implementing the protocol.
The Secretariat is also seeking to expand support for young African innovators through its AfCFTA Digital Innovators Challenge. Antonio said the initiative is intended to help innovators move beyond creating an idea or platform toward making their businesses implementable and bankable.
“If you keep it just in your rooms, you will not be able to succeed,” Antonio said, adding that innovators need institutional support and access to capital to develop their ideas.
The Secretariat plans to hold the innovation challenge annually, with Antonio saying it expects participation and institutional support to increase in subsequent editions.
Antonio said the ultimate measure of the digital trade initiative will be whether the protocol moves beyond a legal document and produces practical changes in how African businesses trade.
“The big news is that the challenge that I enumerate before should not be any more challenge,” he said, referring to interoperability, digital skills and connectivity. He said the objective is for the protocol to become an instrument that changes digital trading across the continent rather than remaining only a legal framework.
