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This article was first published by the World Economic Forum
Africa’s new trading era, ushered in by the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), has been hailed as a transformative force for the continent’s economies. According to the World Bank, it could unlock $450 billion in income gains and lift 30 million people out of extreme poverty by 2035. The stakes are high. Yet these promises remain largely aspirational for the millions of women who already make up an estimated 70% of informal cross-border trade in regions like West and Central Africa.
Women have long been the engine of cross-border trade in Africa. They sustain entire communities by moving goods across borders, ensuring food security, and stitching regional supply chains together in the formal economy's shadows. Yet their visibility in trade does not translate into a voice in trade governance. Very few women have the institutional mechanisms that could help them transition into formal, scalable trade, and the structures they rely on - such as cooperatives, trader associations, and community credit groups, remain fragmented, underfunded, and largely excluded from AfCFTA’s formal mechanisms.
The repercussions of this disconnect are not merely institutional, they shape the daily realities of women traders. Across the continent, women traders face entrenched challenges, including routine harassment at border posts, limited control over assets, and restricted mobility, shaped by cultural norms. Business owners struggle to access finance, due to limited credit histories, lack of collateral, and complex regulatory requirements - conditions that make scaling impossible, as highlighted by the IFC’s 2024 report .
These conditions are compounded by poor access to reliable trade information. A 2022 UNDP survey found that more than half of women-owned businesses were only slightly aware of AfCFTA or its benefits. This disconnect between women’s economic contributions and their marginalization from policy spaces reinforces the core problem: the systems built to expand trade are not designed with women in mind.
An Institutional Blind Spot
AfCFTA’s success depends not just on high-level agreements but on the effectiveness of trade institutions that translate policy into practice. Yet across the continent, these institutions are often blind to the specific realities of women in trade. This structural oversight, or institutional blind spot, threatens to leave behind the very demographic that sustains Africa’s informal trade economy.
In many countries, trade institutions are under-resourced, disconnected from informal and semi-formal economies, and ill-equipped to serve women traders. According to the 2022 report by the African Union, institutional capacity gaps are among the most significant barriers to AfCFTA implementation, especially in lower-income countries where women’s participation in trade is highest. These gaps are not gender-neutral. Many institutions lack the mandate, training infrastructure, or staff to educate women on critical trade mechanisms such as rules of origin, digital customs systems, or dispute resolution. The result is a policy environment in which women are often left to navigate opaque and shifting trade regimes alone.
Specifically, the grassroots structures that women traders depend on, cooperatives, savings groups, cross-border informal networks, and local market associations, are routinely excluded from national and regional consultations. These institutions, though central to the survival and resilience of millions of women engaged in trade across Africa, remain invisible within AfCFTA’s governance architecture. This exclusion denies women traders the ability to shape the policies that govern their economic participation and disconnects continental trade frameworks from the lived realities of cross-border exchange.
While the 2024 Protocol on Women and Youth in Trade marked a welcome step by codifying commitments to access, equity, and protection, its operational impact remains limited. It recognizes gender inclusion, but stops short of institutionalizing the voices and experiences of those at the grassroots. No formal mechanisms exist to ensure these women-led groups are represented in decision-making bodies or implementation processes. The protocol’s language is aspirational rather than binding, which leaves room for inaction. For example, Article 19 establishes a Committee on Women and Youth in Trade but fails to specify how grassroots organizations will be engaged, consulted, or represented within its operations. Further, the separation of the protocol from AfCFTA’s core legal instruments limits its transformative potential. These gaps allow the protocol to make rhetorical commitments while excluding the very actors who carry the weight of trade on the continent.
From Bystanders to Builders
The AfCFTA presents a bold vision for continental economic transformation. However, its credibility hinges not only on intergovernmental consensus or policy blueprints, but by its capacity to empower the grassroots institutions that drive Africa’s real economy - micro, small, and medium enterprises, cooperatives, and informal cross-border traders. To move from symbolic inclusion to structural empowerment, AfCFTA must reconfigure its institutional architecture around the realities of grassroots trade. This begins with strategic investment in grassroots trade networks, particularly cooperatives and associations representing women-led enterprises and small traders. These actors should be prioritized for capacity-building, export-readiness programs, affordable finance, and legal support for formalization and market access.
Second, representation must be institutionalized - not incidental. Grassroots and women-led organizations should have reserved seats in AfCFTA decision-making bodies, and mandated consultation mechanisms such as local trade forums, participatory monitoring, and grievance redress systems must be embedded into implementation structures.
Digital inclusion is another foundational pillar. Bridging the digital divide requires more than infrastructure; it demands context-responsive strategies, including digital literacy training in local languages, mobile-first customs and e-commerce tools, and subsidized platforms that support market access for small traders. These solutions must be co-designed with the people they aim to serve.
Where models exist, they must be scaled. Successful pilots like UNDP’s HerAfCFTA in Nigeria and Ghana have shown what is possible when women traders are equipped with tailored training, policy access, and digital tools. These initiatives should inform a continental strategy for gender-responsive trade governance.
Finally, AfCFTA must adopt a leadership model that reflects the constituencies it claims to serve. Under Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala’s leadership, the WTO has prioritized gender in global trade through initiatives like Trade&Gender360°, which combine policy training with institutional accountability. A similar commitment to gender-inclusive leadership is essential for AfCFTA’s legitimacy.
The Role of Evidence
Despite high-level commitments, little is known about how national and regional trade bodies are translating gender provisions into everyday practice. Are trade institutions engaging women-led networks in policy dialogues? Are they equipped to deliver gender-responsive training and support? Do implementation structures track the participation of women traders in formal trade?
Answering these questions requires targeted, embedded research, not as an afterthought, but as a central pillar of AfCFTA’s institutional strategy. Data must go beyond aggregate trade flows to capture the lived experiences of women across formal, informal, and semi-formal trade environments. Comparative studies can illuminate what works across different country contexts, and participatory evaluations can help identify which reforms enable institutions to better support women-led enterprises and cooperatives.
Such research should not remain in reports or academic journals. It must directly inform implementation, shaping accountability mechanisms, refining policy tools, and enabling real-time course correction. When done well, evidence can serve as both mirror and map: reflecting the gaps in inclusion and charting a path toward a trade system that truly works for all.
Supporting women traders
For the millions of women already shaping Africa’s trade landscape through informal and grassroots networks, the question is not whether they are ready for AfCFTA. The real question is whether AfCFTA is ready to support them. Centering women’s trade institutions is not just a matter of equity; it is a strategic imperative for sustainable, inclusive growth. AfCFTA’s success will not be measured by ratification counts, but by whether it can shift institutional power, from distant trade bureaucracies to the hands of the people who trade every day. It must move grassroots actors from bystanders to builders of Africa’s trade future.
Authors: Thelma Obiakor, Bisong Anthony Ekpang, Obiageli (Oby) Ekwunwa
