The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) has been widely heralded as a flagship initiative of the African Union’s Agenda 2063, designed to expand intra-African trade, drive industrialisation, and stimulate economic growth through market integration. A recent critique published by Bilaterals, however, casts doubt on the agreement’s ability to achieve these ambitions. The article argues that, although the AfCFTA originates from good (African) intentions, its negotiation, financing, and operational structures have been shaped to a considerable extent by external actors, including major foreign economic blocs and multilateral organisations. The technical support provided by these actors is depicted as a disguised effort to advance their own economic and geopolitical interests at the expense of Africa’s industrial development. Moreover, conditional funding and the promotion of regulatory norms aligned with Global North standards, it claims, risk perpetuating dependency and entrenching Africa’s subordinate role in the global economy.

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African ports are increasingly seeking to enhance their role in global shipping networks, driven both by shifts in international trade and the anticipated growth in intra-African traffic following the operationalization of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). Although trade frictions, rising tariffs and increasing trade policy uncertainty between major Northern Hemisphere economies (particularly the EU and the United States) may encourage the redirection of some trade toward Southern Hemisphere markets, African ports’ ability to capture these flows is not guaranteed.

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