Africa Cannot Trade With Itself Until It Lets Its People Move

By Ziad Hamoui

Seven years. Four ratifications out of the fifteen required. That is the scorecard for the African Union’s 2018 Protocol on Free Movement of Persons – and it explains, more than any trade statistic can, why African citizens still need a visa to visit 45 percent of the destinations on their own continent.

This is not a bureaucratic footnote. It is the gap in which our traders, entrepreneurs, and logistics operators are stuck today.

Last week in Accra, I had the honor of representing Borderless Alliance at the official press launch of the Africa Prosperity Dialogues 2027, organized by the Africa Prosperity Network. The event’s theme – “The Borderless Africa We Want: Move Freely. Pay Seamlessly. Trade More” – is not aspirational branding. It is a precise description of the operational barriers we document every day.

A Promise Undelivered

We speak often of the African Continental Free Trade Area’s promise: 1.5 billion people and a combined GDP exceeding US$3.4 trillion. Yet intra-African trade remains stuck at 15 to 16 percent of the continent’s total trade, having peaked years ago at just 18 percent.

The reason is not complicated. Goods do not move themselves. Value chains do not assemble themselves across borders. They require people – entrepreneurs, traders, and logistics operators, 70 percent of whom in informal cross-border trade are women, carrying the weight of regional commerce on their backs with the least institutional support of anyone in the system.

Movement Is Infrastructure, Not a Favor

Free movement is not a political concession to be granted or withheld. It is core economic infrastructure, as fundamental to trade as a paved road or a functioning port. That is why Borderless Alliance stands firmly behind the “Make Africa Borderless Now!” campaign and the Borderless Africa Agenda 2030, which centers on two clear priorities: a visa-free Africa, and a single African digital payments network that unites mobile money interoperability with platforms such as PAPSS, the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System.

Pair freedom of movement with seamless cross-border payments in local currencies, and Africa’s small and medium-sized enterprises – which already account for 80 percent of employment on the continent – finally gain the scale to become regional champions rather than remaining permanently local.

The Will, Not the Vision, Is Missing

The borders that divide Africa today were drawn in Berlin in 1884 and 1885, without the consent of a single African. And yet our own leaders have already signed the legal architecture needed to undo that legacy’s economic cost: the Abuja Treaty, the AfCFTA protocols. What is missing is not vision. It is the political will to execute it – and a private sector no longer willing to wait for permission.

As we mobilize millions of signatures to present to the African Union Heads of State Assembly in February 2027, the message is simple: the time for debate has passed. The time for implementation is now.

Let us keep pushing for the Africa we all want – peaceful, prosperous, and integrated.

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 a former 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.