IIntra-African trade remains below its potential, contributing only 15% of the continent’s total commerce in 2023. This paper reviews the most recent developments—policy, infrastructural, and firm-level—that are reshaping regional exchange against the backdrop of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). Combining a systematic literature review (2018–2024) with fresh evidence from customs micro-data in six pilot countries and 78 semi-structured interviews, we document three key trends.

Three key trends:

Tariff liberalisation under AfCFTA’s Guided Trade Initiative has already lifted preferential trade in 96 tariff lines by 34%, but rules-of-origin compliance costs and non-tariff barriers still erode up to one-third of the preferential margin.

Logistics performance is improving fastest along the Northern and Central corridors, where average border dwell-time fell from 24 hours in 2019 to 11 hours in 2023, driven by one-stop border points and expanded e-manifest systems; yet the last-mile cost from major hubs to secondary cities remains four times higher than in Asia.

Digital marketplaces are emerging as a new channel of intra-African trade, with B2B platform revenues growing 48% annually; however, cross-border payment fragmentation limits their scale.

Partial-equilibrium model estimates:

Using a partial-equilibrium model calibrated on the new data, we estimate that full implementation of AfCFTA trade-facilitation measures could raise intra-African trade by 27–33% by 2030, with the largest gains accruing to agro-processing, automotive, and pharmaceutical value chains.

Conclusion and roadmap:

The paper concludes with a roadmap of targeted investments—harmonised technical regulations, corridor-specific logistics upgrades, and an African Payments and Settlements Platform—that can convert the current momentum into sustained structural change.