This booklet, updated in May 2024, provides a guide to the AfCFTA – focusing on the architecture of the AfCFTA Agreement and what the Agreement covers. This edition includes an update on the Guided Trade Initiative as well as tariff negotiations for trade in goods, rules of origin, trade in services, Phase II and Phase III negotiations, dispute settlement, institutions, committees and other AfCFTA initiatives, trade facilitation, the RECs and the AfCFTA, and the AfCFTA as a framework for Africa’s industrialisation.

Background

In 2012, the African Union (AU) decided to establish a continent-wide Free Trade Area. The negotiations to adopt the required international agreement began in 2015. All Members of the AU were invited to participate in these negotiations. The Agreement establishing the African Continental Free Trade Area was presented for signature at the 10th Extraordinary Summit of the AU Assembly on 21 March 2018 in Kigali, Rwanda. After the required number of ratifications were deposited with the designated depositary the AfCFTA Agreement entered into force on 30 May 2019. Its general objectives are to create a single continental market for goods and services, with free movement of businesspersons and investments, to expand intra-Africa trade across the regional economic communities and the continent; to enhance competitiveness and support economic transformation; and to promote industrial development.

The AfCFTA’s specific objectives are to eliminate tariffs and non-tariff barriers to trade in goods; liberalise trade in services; cooperate on investment, intellectual property rights and competition policy and on all trade-related areas.

The AfCFTA Agreement is a comprehensive legal compact which includes the Agreement establishing the AfCFTA, Protocols on Trade in Goods, Trade in Services, Dispute Settlement, Institutions, Investment, Intellectual Property Rights and Competition Policy. Protocols on Digital Trade and Women and Youth in Trade have also been added.

 View the e-book here.

Further information on the AfCFTA negotiations, as well as the legal texts of the AfCFTA Agreement and ratification status of the legal instruments, is available on tralac’s AfCFTA resources page.