File Photo: Egypt's maritime terminal in Alexandria governorate, dubbed Tahya Misr (Long Live Egypt), receiving the container ship CMA CGM THAMES. Photos courtesy of the Egyptian Ministry of Transportation
The report was released on the sidelines of the Africa Forward Summit in Nairobi.
The Mo Ibrahim Foundation is an Africa-focused philanthropic organization founded in 2006 by Sudanese-British entrepreneur Mo Ibrahim. It works on governance, leadership, and data-driven analysis of African development issues, with a strong focus on accountability and Africa’s young people.
Egypt signed the AfCFTA agreement in 2018, and deposited its ratification instrument in April 2019, becoming the 18th AU member state to do so.
Titled “Africa on the Move: Boosting Mobility and Connectivity”, the report warned that Africa risks missing out on these gains unless governments accelerate efforts to improve cross-border mobility and modernise transport connectivity across the continent.
It argued that easing the movement of people, goods, and services is essential to advancing continental integration and speeding up the implementation of the AfCFTA, while also supporting regular migration flows within Africa.
AfCFTA is the African Union (AU)’s flagship trade agreement, designed to create a single continental market for goods and services across Africa and to boost intra-African trade. The agreement aims to reduce trade barriers, support regional value chains, and make it easier to move goods, services, capital, and, eventually, people across African borders. It is intended to strengthen industrialization, job creation, investment, and Africa’s overall competitiveness in the global economy.
AfCFTA is considered the world’s largest free trade area, bringing together the 55 AU member states and several regional economic communities. It covers a market of about 1.3 billion people with a combined GDP of approximately $3.4 trillion.
The agreement was inked in March 2018, entered into force in May 2019, and trading under the AfCFTA framework began on 1 January 2021. The AU says it is part of Agenda 2063, the continent’s long-term development plan.
As per the report, major barriers continue to restrict both soft mobility, such as visa-free travel, labour movement, and trade facilitation, and hard infrastructure connectivity, such as roads, railways, and ports across the continent’s more than 30 million square kilometres.
Only four African countries, Mali, Niger, Rwanda, and São Tomé and Príncipe, have ratified the AU’s 2018 Free Movement of Persons Protocol, while just 28 percent of Africans can travel across the continent without a visa, according to the report.
Trade across Africa also remains constrained by non-tariff barriers, including sanitary regulations, packaging standards, and limited currency convertibility, which the foundation estimates costs the continent around $5 billion annually in currency conversion expenses.
On infrastructure, the report noted that Africa’s transport systems remain largely geared towards exporting raw materials outside the continent rather than supporting intra-African trade and movement. Roads remain fragmented and unsafe, rail systems suffer from poor interoperability and outdated technology, and at least 13 countries, many of them landlocked, still lack direct rail access to seaports.
Although air transport within Africa is expanding, it remains costly and limited, while the continent’s river transport network remains largely underutilised, the report added.
The report also pointed to growing international investment in African infrastructure, particularly through China’s Belt and Road Initiative and the European Union’s Global Gateway programme, which includes 55 strategic transport corridors across Sub-Saharan Africa.
However, the report cautioned that infrastructure expansion must also account for climate resilience and the environmental impact of carbon-intensive industries such as steel and cement.
Commenting on the findings, Mo Ibrahim, founder and chair of the foundation, said Africa “will not harness its potential while mobility is restricted and connectivity remains outdated.”
“We talk endlessly about African integration and then make it harder for an African citizen to cross a border within their own continent than to leave it altogether,” Ibrahim said.
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