Special Issue on ‘The AfCFTA and African Trade’

Abstract

The agreement adopted by 54 African leaders in March 2018 establishing the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) has been attracting a great deal of attention in academic and policy circles, as well as within the international development community.1 The growing interest in the AfCFTA partly reflects the fact that the African continent is boldly bucking a global trend toward greater protectionism (see, inter alia, Gunnella and Quaglietti, 2019; Fajgelbaum et al., 2020), but also because it represents a break with the past on a continent where market fragmentation has historically been seen as a major constraint to growth and economic development (Collier and Venables, 2008; Fofack, 2018; IMF, 2019) and offers the opportunity to accelerate the transformation of African economies to enhance their integration into the global economy.