There is something amusing about the African dream. Every year, presidents gather beneath carefully arranged flags, deliver polished speeches about “continental integration,” pose for photographs, and return home to airports where scanners don’t work and border posts still rely on a biro last replaced in 1999 to stamp a form that should not exist in the first place.
So when I read the speeches from Monday’s C-PACT launch at the Presidential Villa, something in me tightened. It always does when leaders start talking about trade. On this continent, “trade” is the most overused and least delivered word after “unity.”
But let’s start from the beginning.
On Monday, the Comptroller-General of Customs, Bashir Adewale Adeniyi, finally snapped. He said what everyone already knows but rarely hears on official podiums that you cannot run the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) with borders that behave like punishment. And he was right. Unlike most ceremonial speeches, this one had detail. It had weight. It sounded like someone who knows what mess lies beneath the public statistics.
He noted that customs services hold the “richest and most granular trade data on the continent.” Anyone who has ever reported in West Africa knows this is true. Customs officers know what is moving, who is moving it, who should not be moving it, and whose uncle is trying to smuggle tyres inside a shipment of tomatoes.
They also know the holes. And those holes are swallowing AfCFTA whole.
One detail made me pause: 53 CEOs and 19 managing directors attended that launch. CEOs don’t casually wake up to attend customs events. Bankers especially. Bankers don’t arrive on time to their own weddings. If they show up early to a customs platform, they smell something trade finance, supply chains, cross-border settlements. They were not there for decoration.
Nigeria’s trade with other African countries hit ₦4.82 trillion in the first half of 2025 up by over ₦600 billion from the previous year. Something is shifting.
Then the minister spoke.
Minister of Trade and Investment Jumoke Oduwole said something many people may not have noticed: Nigeria has begun applying preferential AfCFTA tariffs. That sentence matters more than half the political headlines. Preferential tariffs are when AfCFTA stops being a motivational quote and becomes actual competition for markets. Someone in Kigali or Nairobi is already eyeing Nigerian manufacturers like prey.
She also revealed something even more practical Nigeria has opened a dedicated Air Cargo Export Corridor to East Africa. This is not “we are working on it.” It exists. Uganda Airlines, Customs, UNDP. Export costs down by up to 75%.
A 75% reduction can turn a yam farmer in Nasarawa from a survivor into an exporter.
But let’s not pretend the story is all rosy.
Because after the speeches, the problems never lie in the grammar. They lie on the road. A truck moving from Seme to Cotonou can still spend five hours at a checkpoint because someone in uniform wants lunch money.
This is where President Bola Tinubu’s intervention cut surprisingly deep. Yes, he said obvious things fragmented markets cannot negotiate globally. But he also admitted something Nigerian leaders rarely do: Africa already agreed on integration. Execution is the real work.
Execution that word sounds like sweat. It sounds like consistency. It sounds like some old turf holders might lose power if systems become predictable.
Tinubu (or Shettima, reading Tinubu) said success will be measured by border-crossing times, local-currency settlements, and the movement of goods not communiqués, not ribbon cuttings, not posed photographs.
Then he mentioned the National Single Window with actual dates. Phase one in March 2026. Full rollout by December 2026. If those dates survive the bureaucracy, maybe Nigeria is finally stepping into the league of structured economies.
But look closely.
Integrated customs systems. Harmonised regulations. Modernised borders. Predictable logistics. Efficient ports.
These are not new ideas. We have been chanting them since Obasanjo’s first term. The difference is that the continent is now cornered. Europe is tightening. China is slowing. The dollar is misbehaving. And the youth population is expanding faster than infrastructure.
If AfCFTA fails, Africa may not get another chance in this generation.
Let’s go down to the border level.
African borders behave like they are in a long-distance relationship with the modern world. At Jibia or Gamboru, officers often do not even agree on the same process. Customs has one checklist. Immigration has another. Quarantine wants to inspect something no one can see. Standards Organisation appears from nowhere. Then an agency you’ve never heard of shows up with a handwritten receipt book.
Meanwhile, AfCFTA expects goods to move freely.
Freely. Even writing the word feels like comedy.
Adeniyi said customs must move from the backroom to the centre of trade planning. That line should be tattooed inside every African ministry of trade. If customs remains a glorified revenue collector, AfCFTA will remain a PowerPoint project.
Oduwole added another truth digitise Certificates of Origin. Those certificates currently fuel a small and lucrative ecosystem of extortion. Once automated, half the middlemen disappear.
But let’s say something uncomfortable.
The biggest obstacle is not technology or money. It is political ego. Every country wants integration as long as integration does not reduce its little fiefdom.
Customs wants control of data. Ports want control of signatures. Foreign Affairs wants to issue statements. Finance wants control of tariffs. The presidency wants to coordinate. Before long, eight agencies are fighting over one document.
Tinubu says Nigeria is aligning institutions customs, ports, banks, standards, regulators to face one direction. If that alignment survives two budget cycles, applause will be earned.
Because here’s the harsh truth: African leaders like the idea of AfCFTA far more than the discipline required to implement AfCFTA.
And Adeniyi was right weak borders are not neutral. They destroy industries, reward smugglers, punish legitimate exporters, and create a shadow economy that can swallow the formal one.
Africa cannot build a continental market on borders powered by diesel generators and handwritten registers. We should not need foreign consultants to say this.
Still, credit where due.
Nigeria adopting preferential tariffs huge. The air cargo corridor huge. A 21% jump in exports huge. Manufacturing growing by over 6% huge. Four new industrial parks, six more coming. These are real numbers.
But one question remains:
Will the politics allow the progress to survive?
AfCFTA is not a peace project. It is a battlefield. Every country wants to be the continental hub Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Egypt. When ambitions clash, borders become weapons.
That is why C-PACT matters. It forces customs services the people who actually control trade to talk to one another instead of waiting for presidential committees that meet once a year and issue statements filled with adjectives.
But let’s cool the optimism.
AfCFTA will not magically industrialise Africa. It will not fix electricity. It will not stop corruption. And it will not abolish the most irritating question at West African borders:
“Anything for the boys?”
What it can do if reforms stay on track is force Africa to finally behave like a region instead of neighbours pretending not to share a fence.
So where are we now?
At a crossroads between ambition and old habits.
If borders remain chaotic, AfCFTA dies.
If data remains scattered, investors leave.
If the Single Window becomes another abandoned project, all this collapses into continental noise.
But if reforms survive…
If agencies stop fighting turf wars…
If border officers learn that trade is not a personal business model
Africa might stop exporting raw poverty and start exporting real value.
That and only that keeps me from complete cynicism.
C-PACT is not a miracle.
AfCFTA is not a miracle.
Preferential tariffs are not miracles.
They are a test.
Nigeria says it is ready.
Adeniyi says customs is ready.
Oduwole says industry is ready.
Tinubu says execution is the new anthem.
We will know the truth soon enough at the border.
