Beyond AfCFTA Delays: Why Ghana Must Act Now on Regional Trade

Introduction: The Urgent Call for Pragmatic Regional Integration

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) represents a historic vision for continental economic integration, promising to unlock a market of over 1.3 billion people. However, for many Ghanaian manufacturers and exporters, this vision is materializing at a frustratingly slow pace. In a stark and urgent statement, the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI) has declared that Ghana cannot afford to wait indefinitely for the full and seamless implementation of the AfCFTA agreement. Instead, the AGI is advocating for an immediate, pragmatic alternative: the pursuit of selective bilateral and regional trade agreements with neighboring West African nations.

This call to action, spearheaded by AGI President Kofi Nsiah-Poku, highlights a critical disconnect between high-level multilateral negotiations and the on-the-ground realities faced by businesses. While diplomats continue protracted talks among the 54 AfCFTA member states, Ghanaian producers are losing market opportunities, incurring unnecessary costs, and watching potential foreign exchange earnings slip away due to persistent non-tariff barriers. This article provides a comprehensive, SEO-optimized analysis of the AGI’s position, examining the practical obstacles to intra-African trade, the strategic rationale for sub-regional deals, and the concrete steps needed to transform Ghana’s industrial potential into regional export leadership.

Key Points: The AGI’s Five-Point Advocacy

Following its national council retreat in February 2026, the AGI issued a focused communication centered on accelerating trade. The core demands can be summarized as follows:

1. Prioritize Bilateral Engagements: Actively negotiate streamlined, binding agreements with immediate neighbors like Côte d’Ivoire, Togo, Burkina Faso, and others to bypass multilateral gridlock.
2. Eradicate Logistical & Bureaucratic Bottlenecks: Systematically address the excessive paperwork, inconsistent customs procedures, and border post delays that cripple formal cross-border trade.
3. Implement Robust Anti-Dumping Measures: Protect viable local industries from unfair competition by cheap imports, ensuring a level playing field for domestically produced goods.
4. Leverage the 24-Hour Economy: Position industrial production as the core driver of a round-the-clock economic strategy, which would necessitate and stimulate supportive service sectors.
5. Focus on Implementation over Vision: Shift policy focus from grand continental frameworks to decisive, aggressive execution of reforms in priority areas like trade facilitation and industrial policy.

Background: The Promise and Peril of AfCFTA

The AfCFTA Timeline and Current Stalemate

The AfCFTA officially launched its operational phase on January 1, 2021, with the start of trade under the Guided Trade Initiative. The overarching goal is to create a single market for goods and services, foster industrial development, and boost intra-African trade, which historically has been low compared to other regional blocs. The agreement operates on the principle of “progressive liberalization,” with scheduled tariff reductions and ongoing negotiations on rules of origin, competition policy, and e-commerce.

However, progress has been uneven. While many countries have submitted their tariff reduction offers, the full ratification and implementation of all protocols—particularly the Protocol on Trade in Goods and Services and the Protocol on Dispute Settlement—remain works in progress. The complexity of harmonizing diverse national interests, regulatory frameworks, and administrative capacities across 54 nations has led to significant delays in realizing the agreement’s full benefits. For a businessperson in Accra, this means that while the *theoretical* right to export to Nairobi or Cairo exists, the *practical*, frictionless pathway is not yet a reality.

Ghana’s Industrial Ambition vs. Regional Reality

Ghana has positioned itself as a potential industrial hub in West Africa, with initiatives like “Ghana Beyond Aid” and the “One District, One Factory” (1D1F) program aiming to boost local manufacturing capacity. The country possesses a relatively stable macroeconomic environment, a growing skilled workforce, and strategic ports. Yet, as the AGI points out, this potential is constrained by market access challenges. The domestic market alone is insufficient for economies of scale; regional export markets are essential. The persistent difficulty in formally exporting goods just across the border to Togo or Côte d’Ivoire—often cited as easier to reach via informal routes—is a stark indicator of the non-tariff barriers that undermine formal trade, regardless of continental agreements.

Analysis: Deconstructing the Trade Barriers

The High Cost of “Friction”: Logistics and Bureaucracy

The AGI’s critique zeroes in on the most visceral pain points for exporters: logistics and bureaucracy. These are not merely minor inconveniences but significant cost multipliers and deal-breakers. The issues include:

• Duplication of Documentation: Multiple forms, certificates, and declarations required by different agencies at national and regional levels (e.g., Ghana Revenue Authority, Ministry of Trade, ECOWAS transit documents).
• Inconsistent Border Procedures: Varying interpretations of customs codes, standards, and transit rules by officials in neighboring countries, leading to arbitrary delays and demands.
• Physical Infrastructure Gaps: Poor road networks at border posts, inadequate storage facilities, and inefficient weighing systems cause physical hold-ups.
• Corruption and Rent-Seeking: While not always stated explicitly, the “excessive formalism” often creates opportunities for informal payments to speed up processes, raising the cost of formal trade.

The result is a paradox where exporting to Europe or Asia, despite greater geographical distance, can be more predictable and less costly than trading with a next-door neighbor. This violates the fundamental economic principle of comparative advantage and stifles the development of regional value chains.

The Anti-Dumping Imperative: Protecting Local Value Addition

Vice President of AGI, Mukesh Thakwani (CEO of B5 Plus), provided a powerful case study: the steel industry. He noted that Ghana’s steel capital operates at less than 60% capacity despite having the technology to produce a wide range of products for the regional market—from prefabricated buildings to nails. The primary culprit? Unfair competition from cheap imports, often benefiting from subsidies, tax exemptions, or other forms of state support in their countries of origin.

Anti-dumping measures are trade remedies allowed under World Trade Organization (WTO) rules and, by extension, AfCFTA. They are designed to counteract the sale of goods in a foreign market at less than their normal value, which causes or threatens material injury to the domestic industry. The AGI’s demand is for the Ghanaian government to actively investigate and impose such measures where justified. This is not about protectionism for its own sake, but about ensuring that local industries that have invested in capacity, created jobs, and contributed to the tax base can compete on fair terms. Failure to do so results in:

• Deindustrialization and loss of skilled jobs.
• Increased trade deficits and pressure on foreign exchange reserves.
• Stifled innovation and technology transfer.
• A perpetually import-dependent economy vulnerable to external shocks.

The 24-Hour Economy: Industry as the Engine

AGI CEO Seth Twum-Akwaboah linked industrial competitiveness directly to the government’s proposed 24-hour economy policy. The argument is that a true 24-hour economic cycle cannot be sustained by services alone (like call centers or hospitals). It requires a core of productive activity—manufacturing and agro-processing—that operates around the clock. This continuous production would, in turn, create sustainable demand for night-time services: logistics and transportation, security, utilities, banking, and hospitality.

For this vision to work, industries must be confident in their ability to source raw materials and distribute finished goods efficiently, including across borders. A dysfunctional regional trade environment directly undermines the 24-hour economy. If a factory producing for the West African market cannot reliably ship goods across the border at night or on weekends due to closed border posts, the entire rationale for continuous production collapses. Thus, trade facilitation is a prerequisite for the 24-hour economy’s success.

Practical Advice: Pathways for Businesses and Policymakers

For Ghanaian Exporters and Manufacturers

• Advocate Collectively: Engage with the AGI and other business associations to present unified, evidence-based cases to the Ministries of Trade, Industry, and Foreign Affairs regarding specific bottlenecks and product lines.
• Conduct Regional Market Research: Move beyond intuition. Use data from ECOWAS, AfCFTA’s official portal, and national statistics offices to identify precise demand gaps in neighboring countries for your specific products.
• Master Existing Protocols: Gain deep expertise in the ECOWAS Trade Liberalisation Scheme (ETLS) and the AfCFTA’s Guided Trade Initiative (GTI). While imperfect, these are existing legal frameworks that can be leveraged for preferential access.
• Invest in Compliance: Ensure your products meet the relevant regional standards (e.g., ARSO standards) and that your documentation is impeccable. This reduces the room for discretionary delays at borders.
• Explore Public-Private Partnerships: Propose joint ventures with firms in neighboring countries to produce within their markets, using Ghanaian expertise and capital, thereby bypassing some trade barriers.

For Ghanaian Policymakers and Government Agencies

• Launch “Fast-Track” Bilateral Negotiations: Identify 3-5 key export products where Ghana has a clear competitive advantage (e.g., processed foods, pharmaceuticals, fabricated metals, light manufactured goods). Mandate trade negotiators to secure specific, simplified rules of origin and mutual recognition of standards for these sectors with immediate neighbors within a 12-month timeline.
• Establish a Single Window for Regional Trade: Digitize and integrate all export documentation (customs, standards, phytosanitary, etc.) into one national portal that is interoperable with the systems of key neighboring customs authorities.
• Joint Border Posts and One-Stop Border Posts (OSBPs): Accelerate the completion and operationalization of OSBPs like the one at Aflao (Ghana-Togo). Ensure they are truly “one-stop” with co-located officials from both countries working under harmonized procedures.
• Activate Anti-Dumping and Safeguard Investigations: Empower the Ghana Revenue Authority and the Ministry of Trade to proactively investigate petitions from industries like steel, paper, and textiles. Use the threat of legitimate investigations as a deterrent against unfair trade practices.
• Infrastructure Corridor Development: Prioritize the rehabilitation and maintenance of key trunk roads connecting major production centers (e.g., Tema, Kumasi) to primary border towns (e.g., Aflao, Elubo, Paga). Link this to the 24-hour economy agenda.
• Diplomatic Engagement on Trade Facilitation: Use bilateral commissions and summits to elevate specific, operational trade barrier issues (e.g., “Why is the customs officer in San Pedro demanding a separate certificate for product X?”) to the highest levels for resolution.

FAQ: Addressing Common Questions

Is pursuing bilateral deals a betrayal of the AfCFTA?

No. The AGI’s position is complementary, not contradictory. Bilateral and regional agreements within the AfCFTA framework are explicitly permitted and can serve as “building blocks” for the continental market. They allow for faster, deeper integration on specific issues among a smaller group of ready and willing partners, creating “islands of efficiency” that can eventually be expanded. The goal is to create momentum and proof of concept that the AfCFTA can later absorb and standardize.

What’s the difference between a non-tariff barrier (NTB) and a tariff?

A tariff is a tax imposed on goods as they cross a border. Under AfCFTA, these are being progressively eliminated. A non-tariff barrier (NTB) is any other policy or practice that obstructs trade, such as quotas, complex licensing requirements, discriminatory standards, bureaucratic delays, and corruption. NTBs are often more restrictive than tariffs and are much harder to negotiate away in multilateral settings because they are embedded in domestic regulations. The AGI’s fight is primarily against NTBs.

How can small businesses benefit from these proposed changes?

Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are the most vulnerable to trade friction due to limited resources for compliance and logistics. Simplified, predictable border procedures directly reduce their transaction costs and risks. Access to regional markets allows them to scale beyond the saturated domestic market. Anti-dumping rules protect them from being undercut by subsidized imports in their niche. The AGI’s advocacy, therefore, is fundamentally about creating an environment where SMEs can grow into regional players.

What is a “rule of origin” and why is it so important?

Rules of Origin (RoO) are the criteria used to determine the national source of a product. They are crucial for preferential trade agreements like AfCFTA because they ensure that only goods that have been sufficiently “made” in a member country qualify for lower or zero tariffs. Complex, stringent RoO can nullify the benefits of tariff reduction, as exporters struggle to prove compliance. The AGI’s call for simplified, business-friendly RoO in bilateral deals is aimed at making preferential access a reality, not just a paper promise.

Is Ghana’s 24-hour economy plan feasible without fixing regional trade?

It is significantly less feasible. A factory operating 24/7 needs a constant, reliable flow of inputs and a market for its outputs. If regional