What AfCFTA is and how it works

What was signed at Kigali

The 10th Extraordinary Session of the African Union Assembly, held at Kigali on 21 March 2018, opened the Agreement Establishing the African Continental Free Trade Area for signature, and 44 of the Union's member states signed it there. Article 23 of the text sets the condition for it to take effect: thirty days after the deposit of the twenty-second instrument of ratification. That deposit was recorded on 29 April 2019, within thirteen months of the opening for signature, and the agreement entered into force on 30 May 2019. The 12th Extraordinary Session, at Niamey on 7 July 2019, launched what the Assembly called the operational phase, listed the state parties that had deposited instruments by then, and welcomed the signatures of Benin and Nigeria. The secretariat building at Accra was handed over on 17 August 2020, and trading under the agreement began on 1 January 2021.

Why signing is not joining

Three separate acts sit between a signature and a set of obligations. Article 22 opens the agreement for signature and for ratification or accession according to each state's own constitutional procedure. Article 24 makes the Chairperson of the African Union Commission the depositary, and it is the deposit rather than the signature that counts towards the threshold in Article 23. Article 25 forbids reservations, so a state accepts the text whole or not at all, and Article 27 allows withdrawal only after five years from the date the agreement entered into force for that state party, taking effect two years after the notice is received. The Trade Law Centre keeps a running record of the deposits and listed 49 signatories as having deposited an instrument of ratification when it last updated that record in June 2026.

What the members already belonged to

Article 3 states one of the general objectives as resolving the challenges of multiple and overlapping memberships, which is an unusual thing for a trade agreement to admit about the ground it is being laid on. It is not resolved by clearing the ground. Article 5 names the free trade areas of the regional economic communities as building blocs for the AfCFTA and lists variable geometry among the governing principles. Article 19 then sets the order of precedence in the opposite direction from the usual one: state parties belonging to regional economic communities, regional trading arrangements or customs unions that have reached higher levels of integration among themselves keep those higher levels. The negotiations took eight recognised communities as their starting point, COMESA, SADC, the East African Community, ECOWAS, ECCAS, CEN-SAD, IGAD and the Arab Maghreb Union, and the effect is legible on the member pages of this catalogue, where a single country's group list routinely carries a regional community, a customs union and a currency union beside this one.

How tariffs and origin rules were settled

The modalities agreed in December 2018 set liberalisation at 90% of tariff lines, with 7% designated sensitive and given a longer timetable and 3% excluded from liberalisation altogether. A schedule alone does not move a container. A state has to publish tariff rates the secretariat has approved, apply the agreed rules of origin, and clear the goods through customs, and Article 4 lists cooperation on customs matters and trade facilitation among the specific objectives for that reason. The Guided Trade Initiative was launched at Accra on 7 October 2022 with eight participating countries, Cameroon, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, Rwanda, Tanzania and Tunisia, and the first consignment under it was tea shipped from Kenya to Ghana. Settlement is a separate problem, because a continental market cleared through banks outside the continent pays for the crossing twice. The Pan-African Payment and Settlement System, built by the African Export-Import Bank, had its commercial launch at Accra on 13 January 2022.

What is still being negotiated

Article 6 puts investment, intellectual property rights and competition policy inside the scope of the agreement, and Article 7 defers them to a second phase of negotiations conducted in successive rounds. The 37th Ordinary Session of the Assembly, at Addis Ababa on 17 and 18 February 2024, adopted the Protocol on Digital Trade and the Protocol on Women and Youth in Trade. One objective in Article 3 carries no date at all: to lay the foundation for the establishment of a continental customs union at a later stage.

Where the edges are argued

The agreement was opened to the member states of the African Union rather than to a negotiated list, so the roster follows the Union's own. At Niamey on 7 July 2019 the Assembly recorded that the signatures then covered every member state of the Union except Eritrea, and called on those that had not signed or ratified to do so. The deposit that met the threshold in Article 23, on 29 April 2019, was made in the name of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, which the African Union counts among its member states and which this catalogue files as a disputed territory rather than a country. The catalogue records the deposit and the difference in filing, and settles neither.