What Is the AfCFTA? A Plain-Language Guide for Businesses

There is no shortage of writing about the AfCFTA, and most of it is written for people who already know what a tariff schedule is. This is the plain-language version — what the agreement is, where it actually stands, and what it changes for a business operating out of Cameroon.

The short version

The African Continental Free Trade Area is a treaty signed in Kigali on 21 March 2018 and in force since 30 May 2019. Its object is to turn fifty-plus national markets into one continental market by removing tariffs on intra-African trade and by making it possible — in principle — for a business in one country to treat the whole continent as home.

It is the largest trade agreement ever signed by volume of participating population, covering a market of roughly 1.4 billion people.

As of 4 September 2026, 54 of the 55 African Union member states have signed — Eritrea is the sole exception — and 50 have ratified, the fiftieth being Somalia. Benin, Libya, South Sudan and Sudan have not yet done so.

That distinction matters more than the headline suggests. Signing is a political commitment. Ratification — the deposit of an instrument with the Chairperson of the African Union Commission, the depositary — is a legal one. Only ratifying states can actually apply the preferences.

Cameroon is in, and has been since 2020

Cameroon signed at Kigali on 21 March 2018, alongside 44 other states on the day itself, and deposited its instrument of ratification on 1 December 2020, becoming the 33rd State Party.

This is worth stating plainly because it is sometimes described incorrectly. Cameroon is not merely a signatory. It is a full participant, and it has been for close to six years.

What member states have actually committed to

Tariff commitments were agreed in Niamey in June 2017, in three categories:

• Category A — at least 90% of tariff lines — liberalised in 5 years for non-least-developed countries, 10 years for LDCs.
• Category B — sensitive products, at most 7% — over 10 years for non-LDCs, 13 years for LDCs.
• Category C — excluded, at most 3% of tariff lines — with no liberalisation, justified on food security, national security, fiscal revenue, livelihood and industrialisation grounds.

The eventual coverage is therefore 97% of tariff lines. Trade unions have argued that 3% is too small a carve-out, having proposed 15%.

The timetable has slipped repeatedly. An original end-date of January 2022 moved to October 2025 and then to February 2026. Category B phase-down began on 1 January 2026, and the AU Assembly in February 2026 directed a review of the tariff modalities themselves.

There is a second condition that is easy to miss, and it is the one that bites. Fifty tariff offers have been submitted and 48 verified — but as at 28 September 2026, only 26 States Parties had actually gazetted their schedules of tariff commitments, and only 16 had lodged complete category schedules.

So: a Cameroonian exporter cannot rely on the AfCFTA for a given product unless the importing country has published a preferential rate for that product. That is the check to make first, and the e-Tariff Book is where to make it.

What is not yet in force

Three protocols entered into force with the Agreement itself: Trade in Goods, Trade in Services, and Dispute Settlement.

Five more have been adopted by the AU Assembly but none of them is in force:

• Investment Protocol and Competition Policy Protocol, adopted February 2023.
• Intellectual Property Rights Protocol, adopted February 2023.
• Digital Trade Protocol and Protocol on Women and Youth in Trade, adopted February 2024.

Each requires 22 ratifications to enter into force, and the AU Assembly directed that all five be completed by the end of 2026. The annex on investor-to-State dispute settlement under the Investment Protocol remains outstanding, and is actively contested by several member states — a point that matters if you are an investor weighing the agreement as a protection.

One common error to avoid: there is no "protocol establishing the AfCFTA Secretariat". The Secretariat is created by Article 13 of the Agreement itself. Its first Secretary General was installed in Accra on 31 March 2020.

What it would be worth if it worked

The projections are large and they come from serious institutions, so they are worth quoting with their sources attached rather than paraphrasing into round numbers:

• The World Bank (2020) projected total exports rising by roughly 29%, exports within the continent by 81%, real income by 7% — about US$450 billion — and 30 million people lifted out of extreme poverty, by 2035.
• AfDB's African Economic Outlook 2025 gives a similar income figure of US$450 billion and exports rising by US$560 billion by 2035.
• UNECA's Economic Report on Africa 2025 projects intra-African trade up 45% and GDP up 1.2% by 2045 — the largest headline number, and the one most often quoted without its date.

Against that, the current baseline is sobering. Intra-African trade reached US$220.3 billion in 2024, up 12.4%, but that is only about 14–15% of Africa's formal trade. Africa's share of world exports is 3.3%, and it has fallen from 3.5% in 2009. The continent has been liberalising internally for seven years and remains marginally more open to itself than a decade ago.

The part most articles leave out

The honest assessment is that the AfCFTA is not yet operating at scale, and the people responsible for it say so.

In July 2025, Secretary General Wamkele Mene told Reuters that "we are on our own", noting that fewer than half of states are actually trading and that member states are not paying their assessed contributions to the Secretariat budget. In January 2025 the South Centre described "rushed negotiations and hollow protocols" and said that no meaningful trade had happened yet.

The hardest single number: as of January 2025, 13 certificates of origin had been issued across all of Central Africa — four to Cameroon, nine to Rwanda — against a combined population approaching 200 million.

The review contemplated by the Agreement's Articles 28 and 29, and directed by the AU Assembly in February 2026, has not yet been held. That is the single most consequential fact about implementation at present, and it is genuinely uncertain which way it will go.

What this means if you are running a business in Cameroon

Three practical conclusions.

Use it, but do not bet on it. Cameroon has cleared the legal hurdles — ratification, a common CEMAC tariff offer covering all six member states, and Guided Trade Initiative participation since October 2022. Use the preference where you can evidence it. Do not redesign your cost structure around duty savings that may not arrive on schedule.

Watch the regional customs layer. The harmonised ECCAS–CEMAC Customs Code and the ECCAS Common External Tariff entered into force in Cameroon on 1 January 2026, using the HS 2022 nomenclature. That sits on top of AfCFTA preferences, and how the two interact is a live practical question rather than a settled one. Get it answered before you quote a landed price.

Your most immediate markets are not inside the AfCFTA. The largest export destinations for Central African businesses remain in Europe, and Cameroon is a member of CEMAC, which operates a common external tariff with an average rate around 18%. Nigeria, with the continent's largest market and a functioning AfCFTA presence of its own, sits in your neighbourhood — but that is a separate negotiation, not a formality.

If you want the specifics for your own product and destination, our services page covers trade and investment advisory, and market intelligence on African trade sets out the sector view. If you would rather talk it through, start a conversation and we will pick up from there.