Despite accounting for barely 3% of global merchandise trade, Africa’s engagement with the multilateral trading system is pivotal—both for the continent’s structural transformation and for the future legitimacy of the World Trade Organization (WTO). This paper interrogates Africa’s evolving role from Marrakesh (1994) to the present, tracing how African coalitions shifted from defensive postures on commodity preferences to proactive agenda-setting on services, digital trade, and environmental goods.

Methodology:

Blending legal-textual analysis of WTO agreements with an original dataset of 2,700 African trade disputes and 48 in-depth interviews with negotiators in Geneva, we identify three core findings.

Three core findings:

African countries have increased their bargaining leverage through disciplined bloc formation—most notably via the African Group and the “African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP)+” caucus—raising the probability of favourable rulings by 27%.

Preference erosion and tightening rules of origin have diminished the net benefits of unilateral preference schemes, prompting a re-orientation toward reciprocal South–South arrangements such as the AfCFTA and the African Union’s G-20 accession strategy.

Internal coordination costs remain high: intra-African divergences on tariff bindings, cotton subsidies, and fisheries subsidies delay consensus and expose negotiators to “divide-and-rule” tactics.

Conclusion and policy framework:

The paper concludes with a policy framework that aligns AfCFTA implementation with WTO reform proposals—anchored on plurilateral digital trade disciplines, a development-oriented dispute settlement fund, and a continental green industrialisation waiver. By situating Africa not as a peripheral rule-taker but as a norm-shaper, the study reframes the debate on how multilateralism can be re-engineered to support 21st-century developmental imperatives.