Africa should use the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) to develop major cross-border industrial projects, including facilities that process critical minerals into higher-value products such as electric vehicle batteries, AfCFTA Secretary-General Wamkele Mene said.
Mene said the continent should aim within the next decade to establish two or three major projects that demonstrate how the AfCFTA can support industrialisation and economic integration beyond tariff reductions and trade agreements.
One potential example is a lithium battery manufacturing project linking Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, two countries central to Africa’s growing role in the global supply of minerals needed for the energy transition.
“If we make the lithium battery facility between Zambia and DRC become a reality, I think that will unlock the capacity of the continent to drive industrial development, especially in the auto sector,” Mene said during an Africa Annual Meetings 2026 discussion.
The project would represent a shift away from Africa’s traditional role as an exporter of raw materials toward greater processing and manufacturing within the continent.
Mene said climate change and critical minerals presented both an opportunity and a challenge for African economies, with the growing global demand for lithium and other minerals creating an opening for Africa to capture more value through local processing. The AfCFTA, he said, provides the trade rules and market framework needed to support projects that span several countries. The next step is developing financing structures capable of supporting cross-border investments.
Mene called on Afreximbank and other development finance institutions to adopt syndicated and continental approaches to financing infrastructure and industrial projects.
He cited proposals by Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Cameroon to establish an integrated digital one-stop trade ecosystem as an example of the type of cross-border project that could be supported under the AfCFTA.
The three-country initiative would integrate transit, trade facilitation and customs systems, drawing on rules established under the continental trade agreement.
Mene also pointed to ambitions by Tunisia and Libya to develop a trade corridor connecting the two North African countries with Chad and other markets in Central Africa.
“These are opportunities where the bank can look at financing from a continental approach,” he said.
Africa’s existing trade corridors are largely designed around regional markets and remain insufficiently interoperable at a continental level, Mene said. Building corridors that can connect multiple regions would be a major achievement for the AfCFTA and could help reduce the fragmentation that continues to constrain trade and industrial development.
The AfCFTA chief said the continent’s integration strategy had deliberately moved away from a linear model that relied solely on sequential stages of economic cooperation.
Instead, the agreement combines trade liberalisation with industrial development, digital integration and legally binding commitments on the inclusion of women and young people.
Mene said this approach reflects the distinct structure of African economies and the need to ensure that integration produces broader development outcomes.
The AfCFTA has now established much of its legal foundation, with 50 countries having ratified the agreement and 26 actively trading, according to Mene.
The greater challenge is translating those rules into commercially viable projects.
“Industrial development financing examples are exactly what we need to accelerate so that the AfCFTA can become a reality,” he said.
For Africa, the next decade of the trade agreement may therefore depend less on negotiating new rules and more on whether governments and financiers can identify and fund projects large enough to link the continent’s resources, industries and markets.
