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The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Secretariat and the ADI Foundation have formed a joint venture to finance a continent-wide digital trade infrastructure.<\/p>\n
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The project aims to reduce cross-border payment settlement costs by up to 90% and address digital fragmentation that costs Africa an estimated $100 billion annually.<\/p>\n
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Pilot deployments will begin in selected AfCFTA trade corridors from late 2026, with continent-wide coverage targeted by 2030.<\/p>\n
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The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Secretariat and the ADI Foundation signed an agreement in New York on Saturday, July 18, to establish a joint venture that will mobilize financing for a continent-wide digital trade infrastructure. The initiative aims to reduce cross-border transaction costs and improve African businesses’ access to regional markets.<\/p>\n
The project specifically targets the fragmentation of Africa’s digital and financial systems, which continues to complicate trade between countries. According to the assessment presented under the agreement, these shortcomings cost the continent’s economy as much as $100 billion each year. The partners aim to eliminate a significant share of those costs over the next five years by streamlining cross-border payments and facilitating the exchange of trade documents.<\/p>\n
According to the AfCFTA Secretariat, the planned infrastructure could reduce the cost of settling cross-border trade payments by up to 90%. The system will also help businesses unlock financing by enabling them to leverage assets such as inventories and certified invoices more effectively. As a result, the initiative seeks to address one of the main constraints facing African companies\u2014particularly small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)\u2014as they expand beyond domestic markets.<\/p>\n
The project rests on three strategic pillars. First, it will establish verifiable digital business identities that will enable financial institutions and trading partners to assess companies’ credibility and transaction history more efficiently. Second, it will digitize and authenticate trade documents to reduce administrative costs and processing times for cross-border transactions. Third, it will ensure interoperability with digital infrastructures and payment platforms that already operate across the continent.<\/p>\n
The partners expect to launch the first deployments in selected AfCFTA pilot trade corridors from the end of 2026. They will then expand the infrastructure progressively across Africa, with full continental coverage targeted by 2030. The partners will build the infrastructure on open standards and align it with the AfCFTA legal framework, including its Digital Trade Protocol.<\/p>\n
The AfCFTA Secretariat also aims to enable more businesses that have remained excluded from cross-border trade to participate in the continental market. SMEs, as well as women- and youth-led businesses, continue to face limited access to trade finance, fragmented payment systems and the absence of reliable mechanisms to verify their commercial identity.<\/p>\n
Looking ahead, the AfCFTA Secretariat and the ADI Foundation believe the digital infrastructure could accelerate intra-African trade, narrow the continent’s trade finance gap and support the formalization of millions of small businesses. According to their projections, these combined effects could generate up to $900 billion in additional economic output across Africa by 2030.<\/p>\n
This article was initially published in French by Samira Njoya<\/p>\n
Adapted in English by Ange J. A de Berry Quenum<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Secretariat and the ADI Foundation have formed a joint…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":344371,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5],"tags":[3709,63,33574,70495,17753,459,1240,39751,263],"class_list":["post-344370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-africa","tag-afcfta","tag-africa","tag-businesses","tag-costs","tag-cross-border","tag-digital","tag-infrastructure","tag-secretariat","tag-trade"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@africa\/116969385644474757","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344370\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}