If customs inefficiencies represent one source of friction, non-tariff barriers represent another. Tariffs are relatively easy to identify and quantify. Non-tariff barriers can be embedded within the regulatory systems through which businesses must operate; licensing requirements, technical standards, certification procedures, inspections, product requirements, sanitary measures, and administrative processes can all affect the ability of an exporter to enter a market.

Not every non-tariff measure is a barrier in the negative sense. Governments have legitimate responsibilities to protect consumers, workers, public health, safety and the environment. The challenge is to distinguish between legitimate regulation and unnecessary regulatory fragmentation. Where similar products are subject to substantially different requirements across neighbouring African markets, businesses may face additional costs that have little relationship to the underlying economic value of the regulation.

This issue is particularly important for Africa’s textile and apparel industry. A manufacturer supplying several African markets may need to understand different labelling requirements, certification procedures, conformity assessments or inspection processes for each destination. For a large multinational company, this complexity may be manageable through dedicated compliance teams. For a small or medium-sized African manufacturer, it can become a practical barrier to exporting altogether.

The scale of this challenge is becoming clearer. UN Trade and Development’s 2026 Global Trade Update reports that non-tariff measures impose higher export costs than tariffs in 88% of countries examined. It also finds that regulatory convergence could reduce NTM-related costs significantly, with African economies potentially achieving substantial gains from greater regulatory cooperation in manufacturing and other sectors.

The AfCFTA already contains a dedicated framework for addressing non-tariff barriers. The continental NTB mechanism allows businesses and governments to report, monitor, and resolve barriers, while UN Trade and Development and the AfCFTA Secretariat have continued to build awareness and capacity around the mechanism. In 2026, UNCTAD reported that the number of registered users of the AfCFTA NTB mechanism had increased to more than 1,900, demonstrating growing engagement with the system.

The next challenge is therefore to move from reporting barriers to systematically resolving them. The effectiveness of AfCFTA will depend not only on whether businesses can identify an obstacle, but on whether institutions can remove or reduce that obstacle quickly enough to make a commercial difference.

For the CTA sector, regulatory cooperation should therefore be understood as an industrial competitiveness issue. If Africa wants manufacturers to build regional supply chains, it must make it easier for those manufacturers to satisfy legitimate requirements across multiple markets without reproducing unnecessary regulatory costs at every border.

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