The WTO 2026 Annual Report depicts a global trading system that remains remarkably resilient but increasingly difficult to navigate. Trade continues to expand, particularly in services and digital commerce, yet geopolitical fragmentation, supply-chain realignments and growing policy uncertainty are reshaping the conditions under which economies compete. For Africa, this is not simply a story about external trade. It exposes an internal problem: the continent has market size, but still struggles to turn that size into economic scale. As argued in our recent LSE Africa article, “Markets Outgrowing States Show the Scale Dilemma of African Integration”, economic activity in Africa is increasingly operating across borders while institutions and markets remain largely organised nationally. This creates a mismatch between the geography of commerce and the geography of regulation. Traders operate through cross-border economic networks, but encounter national customs procedures, permits, standards, taxes, documentation and enforcement systems at borders. Informal trade may therefore be one of the clearest symptoms of markets outgrowing the institutions that regulate them.
Saturday, September 19, 2026
