Operationalizing the AfCFTA: Why Nigeria’s Five-Year Review Matters for Africa. And What Should Come Next

In 2025, Nigeria emerged as one of the most proactive African countries in translating the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) from aspiration into practice. By publishing the continent’s first five-year implementation review in July, Nigeria demonstrated an uncommon level of accountability, transparency and policy commitment to advancing regional integration. The recently published AfCFTA Achievements Report 2025 formally consolidates the key accomplishments identified in that review and sets out the priority actions for 2026 to sustain and advance the AfCFTA implementation process. Prepared by the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment (FMITI) with support from Afreximbank, GIZ, UNDP, and ODI Global, the report is particularly timely. As geoeconomic fragmentation deepens (fueled by the weaponization of trade policies, great-power rivalry, and the politicization of trade, finance, and aid), African economies face rising external shocks, making the AfCFTA a critical tool for regional resilience and economic security.

Nigeria’s approach in 2025 combined high-level political leadership, institutional coordination, and practical trade facilitation. At the continental level, the President of Nigeria was appointed (alongside Kenya and South Africa) as co-champion of the AfCFTA Protocol on Digital Trade, positioning the country at the center of one of the agreement’s most forward-looking pillars. The Digital Trade Protocol moves beyond tariff liberalization to address the real drivers of contemporary trade, including e-commerce, digital payments, electronic transactions, data governance, and cybersecurity. By promoting regulatory convergence and interoperability across African markets, it seeks to reduce transaction costs, expand market access for MSMEs, and integrate services and digitally enabled value chains into intra-African trade. In a fragmented global economy, this protocol is strategically significant: it enables Africa to shape its own digital trade rules rather than importing external regulatory models.

Nigeria also reinforced its continental role by securing hosting rights for major events such as the Intra-African Trade Fair 2027, underlining its ambition to serve as a hub for regional trade and investment.

Domestically, Nigeria focused on governance and implementation (often the weakest links in regional integration efforts). The establishment of a Central Coordination Committee (AfCFTA-CCC) brought together public institutions and the private sector to steer AfCFTA implementation, supported by a national action plan aligning continental commitments with national development priorities.

Nigeria also gazetted its provisional tariff concessions in April 2025 and conducted a national mapping of digital services in the country in the same month. In October 2025 the country submitted extensive services commitments to the ECOWAS Commission for notification to the AfCFTA Secretariat. The document also mentions the launch of a dedicated Exports Air Cargo Corridor to East and Southern Africa in partnership with Uganda Airlines and UNDP.

Equally important was the emphasis on awareness and inclusion. Nationwide sensitization campaigns and structured engagement with the private sector aimed to ensure that AfCFTA benefits extend beyond large firms to MSMEs and emerging sectors, which are central to employment creation and industrial diversification.

While challenges remain (ranging from infrastructure gaps and high production costs to broader competitiveness constraints), Nigeria’s experience stands out for its focus on implementation, coordination, and measurable outcomes. This is particularly important in a context where geo-economic fragmentation disproportionately affects African economies, which are typically small, open, and highly dependent on external trade, capital, and aid flows. As global markets become more politically conditioned and volatile, reliance on extra-continental partners increases vulnerability to sudden shocks, preference erosion, and capital reversals.

Against this backdrop, deeper intra-African trade is not only a development objective but a strategic necessity. By expanding regional markets, strengthening regional value chains, and reducing dependence on geopolitically sensitive external partners, the AfCFTA can act as a buffer against global fragmentation. However, this resilience will materialize only if integration moves decisively from ratification to effective implementation.

Nigeria’s five-year review also points to a broader lesson for the continent: systematic monitoring of AfCFTA implementation is essential. Similar multi-year implementation reviews should be undertaken at the level of Regional Economic Communities (RECs), assessing the concrete measures adopted by member states, identifying binding constraints, and clearly prioritizing reforms for the next five-year cycle. Aggregate analyses are both feasible and highly informative; at the continental level, the African Labour Research and Education Institute (ALREI) has already conducted a comprehensive review of AfCFTA implementation in its first 5-year cycle, with a key focus on social dimensions, including employment, equity, and inclusive growth. Combining such social analyses with REC-level implementation reviews can provide a holistic picture of progress and bottlenecks.

Ultimately, the success of the AfCFTA will depend not on its legal provisions alone, but on effective implementation on the ground. While the AfCFTA’s national and regional implementation strategies provide a roadmap for reforms, their impact can only be realized if progress is systematically monitored. Nigeria’s experience demonstrates that structured monitoring, strong institutional coordination, and clear identification of subsequent implementation steps can help translate the AfCFTA into a tangible economic reform agenda. Scaling this approach (particularly through REC-level implementation reviews that aggregate member-state progress, align prioritization objectives, and integrate both social and economic dimensions), offers a more efficient mechanism to ensure the smooth, equitable, and credible operationalization of Africa’s most ambitious integration initiative.