Africa Is Integrating – But in All the Wrong Ways

By Danilo Desiderio

Across the continent, a compelling narrative is gaining momentum: Africa is integrating. This is not merely a matter of perception – the data support it.

Intra-African trade reached approximately US$220.3 billion in 2024, reflecting double-digit growth in recent years. The UN Economic Commission for Africa projects that trade within the continent could rise by as much as 45 percent by 2045 under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).

Political discourse has shifted accordingly. African leaders, policymakers, and development institutions increasingly frame intra-African trade as the cornerstone of economic resilience and sovereignty – a deliberate counter to global volatility and external dependency.

Yet beneath this optimism, the reality is considerably more complicated.

Africa is indeed integrating, but at a measured pace and, more critically, in a structurally shallow way. The 2025 Africa Integration Report – published jointly by the African Union, the UN Economic Commission for Africa, and the African Development Bank – acknowledges meaningful progress in reducing trade barriers and strengthening institutional cooperation.

But it also identifies persistent obstacles: uneven implementation, chronic infrastructure deficits, non-tariff barriers, and sluggish movement of goods, people, services, and capital. What is perhaps most telling is that, despite these incremental gains in connectivity, the continent’s underlying economies are not undergoing fundamental transformation.

The structural shift needed to convert greater connectivity into sustained growth and development remains stubbornly out of reach.

It Is Not How Much Africa Trades – It Is What Africa Trades

In far too many cases, the structure of production across the continent remains essentially unchanged. African nations continue to export similar goods. They compete in the same sectors rather than complementing one another. This raises a question that is too rarely asked with sufficient seriousness: what exactly is circulating across African borders?

The composition of intra-African trade reveals the depth of the challenge. Much of what crosses African borders consists of low value-added products and agricultural commodities; higher-value manufactured goods remain conspicuously limited.

According to the African Trade Report 2025, published by Afreximbank, energy products and primary commodities remain a “foundational pillar” of intra-regional trade flows, even as a gradual – and still tentative – diversification toward manufactured goods begins to emerge. These are goods with limited processing, minimal technological content, and little differentiation across countries.

In many cases, neighboring economies are simultaneously exporting and importing the same categories of products.

Trade volumes increase. The underlying production structure does not evolve. This is not integration in any meaningful economic sense. It is, at best, the circulation of goods.

Volume Is a Misleading Metric

It is tempting to measure integration by trade volume alone. But trade, considered in isolation, can be deeply misleading.

Real integration is not simply about moving goods more efficiently across borders. It is about organizing production across those borders – building value chains in which different countries perform different functions, contribute distinct capabilities, and add value at each stage of the process.

Without this dimension, trade risks becoming an end in itself rather than a driver of structural transformation.

The experience of East Asia illustrates the distinction with precision. Over several decades, countries across the region did not merely trade more – they developed deeply interconnected production systems.

Manufacturing processes were deliberately fragmented across borders. Each country specialized in specific stages: components, assembly, design, logistics.

The result was a system built on complementarity rather than competition. Goods crossed borders multiple times, each time incorporating more value, more knowledge, and more specialization.

Trade was not merely exchange. It was a mechanism for learning, industrial upgrading, and economic transformation. Africa has not yet replicated this logic – and the gap is widening.

Africa’s Missing Link: Connecting Production, Not Just Markets

Important progress has undeniably been made. Markets are becoming more connected. Trade facilitation is improving, if slowly. Regional frameworks are advancing. But production systems remain overwhelmingly national in scope. Industrial strategies are rarely coordinated across borders. Investment flows are not consistently aligned with regional priorities. Supplier networks remain thin.

The consequence is striking: infrastructure corridors risk functioning as channels through which similar goods flow in both directions, rather than as integrated systems connecting complementary industries. The paradox of Africa’s integration moment is precisely this – the continent is becoming more connected faster than at any previous point in its history, yet the structure of its economies is changing far too slowly to take advantage of that connectivity.

From Circulation to Transformation

The next phase of African integration demands a fundamental shift in framing. The central question is no longer simply: how do we trade more? It must become: what do we trade, and who produces what?

Moving forward requires a transition from facilitating trade to structuring production; from national industrial strategies to regional industrial coordination; from connecting markets to deliberately building cross-border value chains.

A continent that trades the same goods with itself is not integrating – it is competing with itself. David Ricardo established two centuries ago that trade generates value when countries specialize according to comparative advantage.

If African nations continue to export broadly similar products to one another, they forfeit the genuine potential of regional integration: the construction of complementary industries and the creation of shared, durable prosperity.

The AfCFTA Is a Platform, Not a Plan

The AfCFTA is a historic achievement, and its importance should not be minimized. But it is not, by itself, a recipe for success.

It is a platform – a stage upon which African countries have the opportunity to redesign how they produce, specialize, and create value together. What ultimately matters is what gets built on top of that platform.

That will determine whether Africa’s integration becomes a mere acceleration of goods circulation, or a genuine and lasting transformation of its economies.

Markets can grow without economies evolving. Africa now faces a defining choice – and the window to make the right one will not remain open indefinitely.

Danilo Desiderio serves as the CEO of Desiderio Consultants Ltd in Nairobi, Kenya, specializing in African customs, trade, and transport policies. He is a customs and trade expert at the World Bank and a senior associate to the Horn Economic and Social Policy Institute (HESPI).