The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) promises to create the world’s largest single market, yet fragmented border-
agency procedures remain a major bottleneck, inflating time and cost to trade across the continent. Drawing on implementation
experience from the EAC, ECOWAS and SADC, this paper proposes a practical framework for deepening inter-agency cooperation
that is fully aligned with the AfCFTA Trade Facilitation Chapter and the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA). Using a
combination of firm-level surveys, border-time-and-motion studies, and case-study analysis of One-Stop Border Posts (OSBPs)
—Chirundu between Zambia and Zimbabwe—we find that coordinated risk management, mutual recognition of controls, and shared
digital platforms can cut documentary compliance time by up to 50 % and reduce average border dwell time for trucks by 35 %. The
paper distils five scalable building blocks: (i) harmonised legal mandates and data-protection protocols; (ii) interoperable single-
window systems linking customs, sanitary-phytosanitary and standards agencies; (iii) joint training and rotation of officers to build
trust and common standard-operating procedures; (iv) jointly financed hard infrastructure (OSBPs, joint inspection sheds, cold-chain
facilities) with transparent cost-sharing models; and (v) performance dashboards that publish real-time clearance metrics to traders
and governments. We conclude by outlining a phased AfCFTA-wide implementation roadmap that leverages the newly signed ECA-
AfCFTA Secretariat partnership to mobilise technical assistance and results-based financing for member states.