Who Is Responsible for Making AfCFTA Work?
The final question may be the most important because AfCFTA implementation is not the responsibility of a single institution. A cross-border textile shipment may interact with customs authorities, standards agencies, ministries of trade, ports, border agencies, transport providers, financial institutions and certification bodies before it reaches its destination. A failure at any point can disrupt the transaction. This means that AfCFTA is not only a trade agreement, it also an institutional coordination project.
The World Bank’s latest integration report makes this point directly, arguing that no single institution can deliver Africa’s integration agenda alone. National governments, regional economic communities, continental institutions and the private sector all have different responsibilities in making regional markets function. The report recommends a practical division of responsibilities across national reforms, regional connectivity and continental coherence.
For the CTA sector, this institutional dimension is especially important because textile value chains naturally cross policy domains. Cotton production may fall under agricultural policy; textile manufacturing under industrial policy; energy and water under infrastructure policy; standards and certification under regulatory institutions; logistics under transport policy; and exports under customs and trade authorities. If these systems operate independently, regional value chains remain difficult to coordinate.
This is why National Trade Facilitation Committees and similar public-private mechanisms matter. UNCTAD’s 2026 assessment shows that effective coordination structures can help governments and businesses identify bottlenecks, reduce delays and respond to disruptions, but also warns that weak monitoring can create a gap between reported progress and what actually happens at borders and ports. The next stage of AfCFTA implementation should therefore focus increasingly on performance rather than process.
Institutions should not only be asked whether they have implemented a reform. They should be asked whether the reform has reduced clearance time, lowered trade costs, removed duplication, resolved an NTB or increased the number of businesses using regional markets.
This also requires stronger private-sector participation. Businesses are often the first to encounter the practical consequences of fragmented procedures. Their experience should therefore become a systematic source of implementation intelligence rather than an informal complaint mechanism.
For Africa’s CTA sector, the effectiveness of AfCFTA will ultimately be determined by the weakest institutional link through which an African product must pass. If customs is efficient but standards systems are fragmented, trade remains constrained. If digital systems are advanced but transport corridors remain unreliable, trade remains constrained. If governments harmonise rules but businesses cannot access finance to scale production, regional value chains remain constrained. AfCFTA execution therefore requires a system-wide approach.