PAFTRAC 2026 CEO Survey: AfCFTA Progress, Persistent Barriers

By Danilo Desiderio

A trade agreement is a promise, not a shipment. It can lower tariffs, harmonize rules and invite firms into new markets, but it cannot, by itself, pay a supplier, clear a truck at the border or tell an entrepreneur in Lagos that a buyer in Nairobi is waiting. That is the uncomfortable lesson emerging from the Africa CEO Trade Survey, produced by the Pan-African Private Sector Trade and Investment Committee (PAFTRAC), an advocacy platform that brings together public- and private-sector stakeholders to improve trade and investment flows across the continent.

The survey, now in its latest annual edition, draws on responses from more than 2,500 business executives. The full report has yet to be officially published, but preliminary findings have begun to circulate, and they tell a story of real progress shadowed by stubborn constraints.

The Good News is Real

Start with the encouraging part. Some 70.2 percent of respondents say they have experienced a tangible operational impact from reforms linked to the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). Even more, 81.3 percent, expect their cross-border business to expand over the next 12 months. For a continent that has long been better at drafting trade agreements than at using them, those are not trivial numbers. They suggest that the AfCFTA is beginning to change how at least some companies operate.

But optimism is not the same as capability, and the rest of the data explains why.

Preferential Access Requires Capital

The most striking figure concerns finance. Fully 57 percent of respondents describe financing cross-border transactions as difficult or very difficult. That should worry anyone who believes tariff cuts alone will unlock continental trade. Selling into a new market requires working capital to produce the goods, financing to ship them and payment systems to get paid. Without those, preferential access has little commercial value: a lower tariff is of no use to a firm that cannot afford the inventory on which it would be charged.

The problem is compounded by the broader financing gap facing African small and medium-sized enterprises, and by the high cost of credit that reflects lenders’ perception of risk. The question, in other words, is not merely whether companies can spot an opportunity across the border. It is whether they have the financial and productive capacity to seize it.

Tools Exist. Awareness Lags.

Then there is an awareness problem that is almost embarrassing for policymakers. More than half of respondents say they are unfamiliar with the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS), the platform built precisely to ease the headache of paying across African currencies. Awareness of other AfCFTA-supporting tools, including the AfCFTA E-Tariff Book, the African Trade Observatory and the mechanisms for reporting non-tariff barriers, is similarly thin.

This is the implementation gap in miniature. Digital platforms can cut information and transaction costs, but only for firms that know they exist, understand how to use them and can reach the services behind them. Building an instrument is not the same as embedding it in everyday commercial practice. A payment system that most executives have never heard of is, for most practical purposes, a system that does not exist.

Meanwhile, the older frictions persist. Respondents continue to cite differences in currencies, national regulations and customs procedures as obstacles. These are precisely the barriers a continental trade area was meant to dismantle, and they remain in place in practice, even where they have been softened on paper.

Two Reforms, One Problem

What should policymakers conclude? The survey’s most important lesson is that opening markets is not the same as enabling businesses to trade across them. Successful participation in the AfCFTA rests on two pillars that must be built together.

The first is enterprise capability. Firms need finance, information and productive capacity to take advantage of preferential access. The second is institutional capability. Customs administrations and other competent authorities must apply the rules efficiently and consistently, so that a compliant exporter is not defeated by a border post.

Neglect either pillar and the structure wobbles. Strengthen firms without fixing the border, and market opportunities will go unused, with capable exporters stuck in queues and paperwork. Modernize customs without helping businesses identify, finance and fulfill cross-border orders, and the reforms will have little to process. The two efforts are complements, not alternatives, and governments and development partners that fund one while ignoring the other will be disappointed by the results.

From Commitments to Commerce

The AfCFTA remains among the most ambitious economic projects in Africa’s history, and the early signs that it is changing business behavior deserve credit. But the next stage of implementation will be less glamorous than the signing ceremonies. It will involve trade finance products that small exporters can actually obtain, awareness campaigns that put tools like PAPSS in front of the people who need them, and customs systems that treat rules as procedures to be followed, not obstacles to be negotiated.

The 70 percent of executives already feeling the benefits are a start. The test of the AfCFTA is whether the remaining firms, the ones still unsure how to pay, where to look or whom to ask, can join them. A market that is open only to those with the means to enter it is not yet the single market Africa was promised.

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