from Part II - Prosperity and Specific Regional Trade Arrangements as International Regimes
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2025
This chapter examines the legal and policy regime that governs the African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement (AfCFTA) and the underlying constraints. The AfCFTA, regarded as the largest trade arrangement after the World Trade Organization (WTO) in terms of the number of participating countries, seeks to utilise economic integration to promote pan-African development as a pathway to prosperity. With a commitment to eliminate tariffs and non-tariff barriers (NTBs) in intra-African trade, the AfCFTA is governed by general and specific objectives as well as principles aimed at making the agreement a transformative instrument of African prosperity. While the AfCFTA is a consequence of normative beliefs and common identity of the state parties, there are fears that NTBs and prevalent weak institutions could frustrate the expected outcome. This further buttresses our contention that normative interests should be mutually constitutive with the institutions established to manage the underlying implementation for prosperity to be realised. Although development and, ultimately, prosperity are well constructed under the AfCFTA agenda, there must be complementarity between the AfCFTA regime and the implementing institutions. This chapter proffers the way forward to navigate these dynamics.
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