Founded in 2018, with the initial decision to create a free trade area adopted in the 18th Ordinary Session of the African Union Assembly, the AfCFTA entered into force in May of 2019. This happened after it secured the required threshold of 22 countries, allowing its formal commencement of trading in 2021 as the world’s largest free trade area. It consists of Africa’s 54 countries working together to progressively facilitate the free movement of goods, people, and capital. One of its core goals is to eliminate 90% of tariffs.

The Move From Policy to Execution

Held in Lagos on July 1st at the National Theatre, the AfCFTA Digital Trade Forum (ADTF 2026) marked a distinct shift from policy formulation to policy execution centered around the question: “How can Africa translate the AfCFTA Digital Trade Protocol into tangible economic value?”

Nigeria’s Strategy and Market Insights

Since 2024, Nigeria has taken steps to improve its intra-African trade and make it mainstream through fiscal policies, industrial growth, and banking reforms. The country conducted trade surveys across 13 Eastern and Southern African countries to identify shortages or high demand in cosmetics, apparel, and manufacturing, while noting existing problems that could impede trade expansion into these regions.

The Launch of the National Single Window

Nigeria hosted a regulatory roundtable and sandbox involving tech firms and central bankers from major African markets like Kenya, Ghana, Rwanda, and South Africa. These led to the creation of the National Single Window on March 27th 2026, a digital platform that serves as a unified gateway connecting importers, exporters, shipping lines, clearing agents and regulatory agencies into a single interface. The platform introduced one-time submission for compliance, maritime, and standard trade documents, with data shared with relevant agencies via the backend. It integrates major agencies like SON, NESREA, NAFDAC, the Nigerian Custom Service, and NAQS, while minimizing human interface in trade processes, reducing demurrage or penalty traders pay for delayed discharging of goods, and minimizing avenues for corruption.

Sierra Leone’s Digital Reforms and Financial Inclusion

Sierra Leone’s attempt to translate the AfCFTA Digital Trade Protocol into tangible economic value features legal and economic safeguards to trade like the Electronic Transactions Act which enables digital contracts and e-signatures. The National Development Policy, Cybersecurity Act, and the new National Data Protection Policy aimed at breeding transactional trust. The country’s National Single Window enabled the digital clearing of goods in Sierra Leonean ports from anywhere in the world, decongesting the country’s overwhelmed seaports. The country’s MUNAFA Fund set up by its Ministry of Finance to formalize local small and medium scale enterprises run by youth and women while providing access to finance at a 5% interest rate has seen a 60% repayment rate.

Seychelles Liberal Trade Policy

The small Island nation of Seychelles, noted the importance of building the physical and political infrastructure for trade and proofing economies against convoluted global supply chains that could negatively impact African trade. The country has removed exchange controls to make regional investors confident about the possibility of moving money fast to back business operations.

Conclusion

Key stakeholders agreed that high internet costs, slow connectivity, and foundational energy supply problems are primary roadblocks to widespread trade optimization. Leaders across board stressed the need for urgent data domestication through the building of 700 data centres to keep data belonging to Africans on the continent while capturing the backend value or privacy, and keeping the economic profits of Africa’s 1.4 billion citizens on the continent. They also acknowledged the need for capital mobilization of Africa’s sovereign wealth and pension funds away from perceptually safe overseas investments to local technology, AI, and mineral processing.