Why Africa’s Youth Will Decide the Future of Intra-African Trade

By Lord Fiifi Quayle

Africa has never lacked treaties.

What it has lacked is translation.

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is the most ambitious economic project ever undertaken on the continent. In scale, in symbolism, and in promise, it rivals independence itself. Yet there is a quiet danger at the heart of AfCFTA: it risks becoming another beautifully written African agreement that lives in conference rooms rather than in markets.

If AfCFTA is to succeed, it must be lived not admired.

And it will be lived by Africa’s youth.

AfCFTA Is Not a Policy Problem. It Is a Social Problem.

The dominant conversation around AfCFTA is technical:

tariffs, rules of origin, customs harmonisation, payment systems.

These matter. But they are not decisive.

The real challenge of AfCFTA is social adoption.

Who understands it?

Who trusts it?

Who is willing to trade under it?

No free trade area in history has succeeded without a critical mass of ordinary economic actors who internalised it as normal. In Europe, that role was played by businesses, students, logistics firms, and young professionals who grew up thinking cross-border trade was natural.

In Africa, that generation must be deliberately created.

Africa’s Youth Are Not a Demographic. They Are an Economic Infrastructure

Africa’s youth are often discussed as:

• a risk,

• a burden,

• or a future dividend.

This framing is incomplete.

Africa’s youth already are the economy:

• They dominate informal and semi-formal trade

• They power the creative economy

• They build logistics hacks where systems fail

• They trade digitally across borders with little policy support

AfCFTA does not begin in ministries.

It begins where young Africans already trade, without protection, without clarity, and often without recognition.

The task, therefore, is not to “introduce” AfCFTA to youth.

It is to formalise, scale, and legitimise what they are already doing.

The Missing Link: Trade Consciousness

Africa’s greatest AfCFTA deficit is not infrastructure

it is trade consciousness.

Too many young Africans know:

• how to migrate,

• how to hustle,

• how to build startups for foreign markets,

but not:

• how to export to a neighbouring African country,

• how to structure a compliant cross-border deal,

• how to price for African markets,

• how to trust African payment systems.

AfCFTA must therefore be treated as a civic-economic education project, not just a legal framework.

This is where public intellectual leadership matters.

Why Accra Matters

That AfCFTA’s Secretariat is headquartered in Accra is not accidental.

Ghana sits at a crossroads of history and responsibility.

From Pan-Africanism to peacekeeping to democratic stability, Ghana has often served as a continental convening space. AfCFTA now offers Ghana a new role: the social capital of African trade.

If AfCFTA is to develop a human face, a youth culture, and a shared trade language, Accra must be where that culture is shaped.

The Case for a Pan-African Youth Trade Forum

This is the logic behind the Quayle Pan-African Youth Trade Forum.

The forum is not an event.

It is an intervention.

Its purpose is to:

• gather young Africans who already trade or want to trade,

• demystify AfCFTA in practical terms,

• connect youth-led enterprises across borders,

• and create a continental network of trade-literate youth.

This is how treaties become systems.

This is how policy becomes habit.

From Youth Inclusion to Youth Ownership

African policy often speaks of “including” youth.

AfCFTA requires something stronger: youth ownership.

Ownership means:

• youth shaping trade corridors,

• youth testing payment systems,

• youth identifying regulatory friction,

• youth feeding real-world experience back into policy.

AfCFTA cannot be implemented for youth.

It must be implemented through them.

A Generational Responsibility

Every major African project eventually confronts a generational question:

Who carries it forward when the speeches end?

AfCFTA is no different.

The youth who internalise AfCFTA today will be:

• tomorrow’s manufacturers,

• traders,

• policymakers,

• and regional integration champions.

If we fail to train them now, AfCFTA will remain elite property.

If we succeed, AfCFTA becomes irreversible.

Conclusion: From Treaty to Tradition

The ultimate test of AfCFTA is not how many countries ratified it.

It is whether a young Ghanaian can trade naturally with a young Kenyan, Rwandan, Senegalese, or Egyptian and consider that normal.

That is how integration endures.

Not as policy, but as tradition.

This is the work of a generation.

And that generation is already here.

Lord Fiifi Quayle

Pan-African Public Intellectual

Convenor, The Quayle Pan-African Youth Trade Forum