A New Chapter For African Trade: How AfCFTA And Bergmans Are Reimagining Customs For A Borderless Continent

By Abdul Gombe
Africa’s economic future will not be determined only by what it produces, but by how efficiently it moves those products across its borders.
For decades, the continent’s greatest paradox has been that while it possesses immense natural resources, a youthful population and one of the world’s fastest-growing consumer markets, African countries have traded more with distant continents than with one another. Inefficient border procedures, cumbersome customs processes, fragmented regulations and weak digital infrastructure have combined to make intra-African commerce slower and more expensive than it ought to be.
It is against this backdrop that the recent signing of a lan...