2025: A Pivotal Year for West African Trade and Infrastructure

By Ziad Hamoui

2025 will be remembered as the year West African trade infrastructure graduated from PowerPoint presentations to bulldozers and rail tracks. After decades of speeches and stalled initiatives, the region witnessed something remarkable: concrete action on transformative cross-border projects that could reshape economic integration across the continent.

The numbers alone command attention. The Abidjan-Lagos Corridor – stretching 1,028 kilometers (639 miles) across five nations – advanced from diplomatic nicety to funded reality, carrying a US$15.6 billion price tag and the promise of 70,000 direct jobs.

Ghana and Burkina Faso signed a binding 950-kilometer (590-mile) railway pact connecting Tema Port to Ouagadougou. Nigeria and Benin finalized frameworks targeting US$4 billion in annual bilateral trade flows.

Combined, these initiatives represent over US$20 billion in committed infrastructure investment, the largest coordinated push in West African economic history.

Beyond Asphalt and Steel

Yet infrastructure, however impressive, tells only half the story. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) promises a US$450 billion market, but its success hinges on an often-overlooked constituency: women cross-border traders who constitute over 60 percent of informal regional commerce.

In August, working with the Cross-Border Women Traders Association, I witnessed firsthand how bureaucratic friction – lack of trader identification systems, inconsistent documentation requirements, arbitrary border delays – transforms what should be routine transactions into expensive ordeals.

This year, through my work at Borderless Alliance and Tarzan Enterprise Ltd., I focused on translating advocacy into operational change. That meant time in policy rooms in Accra and Abidjan, engaging with National Trade Facilitation Committees, contributing to Electronic Transit and Logistics System (ETLS) Task Force discussions, and consistently elevating voices too often excluded from infrastructure conversations.

The learning curve was intentional. I completed the Trade Law Centre’s (TRALAC) intensive course on interpreting international trade agreements and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development’s (UNCTAD) capacity-building program on transit coordination under World Trade Organization Trade Facilitation Agreement Article 11.

These weren’t academic exercises – they directly informed technical contributions to cross-border coordination mechanisms and strengthened the analytical foundation beneath advocacy work.

Ground Truth

Theory matters, but so does presence. February brought me to the Akanu-Noepe Joint Border Post on the Nigeria-Benin frontier, where the gap between policy design and operational reality becomes visceral.

In May, I moderated discussions at the Ghana-EU Business Forum as Ghana recalibrated its international economic positioning. By September, speaking on trade and peace at the Africa Resilience Forum, the interconnection between economic integration and regional stability had become impossible to ignore.

Ghana, despite recent political transitions, has signaled clearly: it is open for business again. The question is whether the broader region can maintain momentum.

The Execution Challenge

Infrastructure projects fail not from lack of ambition but from inadequate attention to operational detail. Corridor digitalization remains inconsistent.

Border agencies still operate on incompatible systems. Customs officers in adjacent posts sometimes cannot communicate electronically with their counterparts 100 meters away.

Women traders still pay informal “facilitation fees” that would be unnecessary with proper trader identification frameworks.

The Abidjan-Lagos Corridor, impressive as it is, will only deliver transformative value if trucks can move seamlessly across five jurisdictions without the current patchwork of stops, inspections, and delays.

The Ghana-Burkina Faso railway must integrate with port operations and customs clearance systems, or it becomes merely expensive track connecting bureaucratic bottlenecks.

A Call to Action

If you work on corridor digitalization, share one concrete example of what actually worked – not what was promised in a consultant’s report, but what reduced clearance times in practice. If you are a policymaker, identify one operational fix you can commit to implementing in 2026 that would measurably reduce border delays.

Not a study. Not a pilot program. An actual, funded, accountable intervention.

West Africa’s infrastructure renaissance is real, but infrastructure without operational excellence is just expensive concrete. The region has moved from aspiration to action.

Now comes the harder part: execution.

The dots are finally being connected. Whether they form a coherent picture depends on what happens next.

Ziad Hamoui is the Co-Founder and Past President of the Borderless Alliance, a leading private-sector advocacy group promoting economic integration and removing trade and transport barriers in West Africa. With extensive experience in Ghana’s road transport, logistics, and shipping sectors, he currently serves as Executive Director of Tarzan Enterprise Ltd., a long-established family business. He is Co-Chair of the Africa Food Trade Coalition, Co-Founder of the Trade Facilitation Coalition for Ghana, and serves on multiple high-level advisory committees on trade, transport, agriculture, and security. A Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILT) Ghana, he is also a former member of its Governing Council.