Officials from the African Continental Free Trade Area secretariat in Accra reported a sustained increase in intra-African trade under preferential terms, several years after the agreement's formal entry into force.
Progress has come from agreed rules of origin covering the large majority of tariff lines and from the expansion of the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System, which allows transactions to clear in local currencies rather than through correspondent banks in dollars.
Businesses continue to report that customs delays, road checkpoints and inconsistent standards inspection matter more in practice than tariff schedules, and industry groups have pressed governments to publish and measure clearance times.
