Can Africa build a continental free market while national markets still remain internally fragmented?

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) represents one of the most ambitious integration projects in modern economic history. Yet beneath the continental vision lies a deeper and rarely discussed contradiction: in many African countries, goods still encounter “borders” long before reaching an international frontier. Kenya offers a striking illustration of this paradox. Widely regarded as one of East Africa’s most dynamic and commercially integrated economies, the country nonetheless continues to experience significant internal trade fragmentation. The movement of some commodities across counties is frequently constrained by overlapping local levies, cess charges, movement permits, road fees, and administrative controls imposed by local authorities.

A Kenyan government report acknowledged this challenge directly, noting that “agricultural produce and minerals by road attracts multiple cess charges across county boundaries to market points". This situation is further described in this post. In practice, a truck transporting maize, potatoes, horticultural products, livestock or quarry materials from western Kenya toward Nairobi or the port of Mombasa may encounter repeated payments, inspections, and administrative procedures across multiple jurisdictions, even where charges have already been paid elsewhere.

These frictions extend beyond cess systems alone. Under Kenya’s veterinary and animal health regulations, the transportation of cattle, goats, sheep, pigs, or poultry across counties often requires official movement permits issued by veterinary or livestock authorities, primarily to prevent the spread of diseases such as Foot-and-Mouth Disease (FMD) and Rift Valley Fever. While such controls serve legitimate public health purposes, they also add further procedural layers to domestic trade circulation of such goods.

More recently, public controversy emerged over additional county-level levies imposed on trucks by several devolved administrations, with reported charges ranging from KSh 500 to KSh 30,000 per vehicle. These fees were widely criticised by transport operators and business associations as potentially unlawful, unconstitutional, and detrimental to the free movement of goods within the national market. The issue is not taxation itself. Every state requires mechanisms for revenue generation. The deeper problem lies in the fragmentation of domestic regulatory and fiscal systems. When neighboring counties apply different cess structures, separate licensing requirements, and inconsistent enforcement practices, domestic commerce begins to resemble cross-border trade. Transport costs increase. Logistics slow down. Informal payments proliferate. Supply chains become uncertain. Gradually, the national market starts functioning less as a unified economic space and more as a patchwork of semi-autonomous fiscal territories.

In effect, “internal borders” begin to emerge within the state itself. This raises a broader continental question: how can Africa realistically construct a seamless continental market if economic circulation often remains fragmented inside countries themselves?

Across much of the continent, traders encounter layers of local levies, checkpoints, duplicated permits, municipal controls, and informal road payments that disrupt domestic circulation long before goods reach international frontiers. In some contexts, it is easier and more predictable to import goods through global maritime routes than to move them efficiently across neighboring provinces, districts, or borderlands. This reality was recently captured bluntly by Aliko Dangote, who observed that it can cost more to transport goods from Lagos to Accra than from Europe to Lagos itself.

The challenge of African integration is therefore not only international. It is also internal. A continent cannot achieve external economic integration while its own domestic economic geography remains divided by micro-barriers, competing jurisdictions, and disconnected administrative systems. One of the least explored dimensions of African integration theory is precisely this persistence of sub-national barriers within states themselves.

The paradox is striking: Africa seeks to build a continental market while many domestic markets still operate less as integrated economic systems and more as fragmented archipelagos. Real integration begins when domestic circulation becomes fluid; when transport corridors operate as coherent systems rather than disconnected segments; when border regions evolve into productive connective spaces rather than peripheral margins; and when different levels of government coordinate development instead of multiplying fiscal barriers and administrative controls.

Perhaps, then, the central question is no longer simply:“How do we integrate Africa?”, but rather: “How do we de-fragment African markets from within?”.