H.E. Ambassador Amma A. Twum-Amoah, Commissioner for Health, Humanitarian Affairs and Social Development (HHSD), African Union Commission
Africa Prosperity Dialogues has rapidly become one of Africa’s most consequential spaces for shaping our economic future through bold thinking, practical solutions and collective resolve. The Africa Prosperity Network has been exemplary in its visionary leadership in bringing together governments, the private sector, innovators and development partners around a single purpose: to accelerate Africa’s integration and unlock its prosperity.
This year’s theme speaks directly to the African Union’s vision of a borderless, opportunity-driven continent. However, Free trade, in the absence of free movement, is an aspiration without substance. Goods cannot move if people cannot move. Opportunity cannot expand if entrepreneurs cannot cross borders. Integration cannot deepen if Africans remain strangers to one another. If we are serious about prosperity, then we must be equally serious about implementing the Protocol on the Free Movement of Persons.
The call for action on the ratification of the Protocol is apt. We need all 55 Member States to ratify to make Africa truly borderless. As of now, 32 countries have signed, and only 4 have ratified. The minimum we need for the Protocol to come into force is fifteen. So I charge all of us to leave this Dialogue not merely as participants, but as ambassadors for free movement. Because when Africans move, Africa moves forward.
Africa stands at a defining moment in its economic history. Through AfCFTA, we have created the largest single market in the world by number of countries, with over 1.5 billion people and a combined GDP exceeding 3 trillion USD. But let us remember a simple truth: Markets do not trade, people do. And, economies do not grow from policy frameworks alone; they grow from enterprises.
If AfCFTA is the engine of Africa’s transformation, then SMEs, women and youth are its power source. Without them, the engine cannot run. Without them, integration cannot deliver prosperity. Across Africa, SMEs represent over 90 per cent of businesses and more than 80 per cent of employment. Yet too many remain local by necessity rather than continental by design. You will all agree with me that an integrated market that excludes SMEs is not integration; it is exclusion.
We must move African enterprises from survival to scale, from informality to competitiveness and from domestic reach to continental impact. Africa is the youngest continent on earth, and African women are among the most entrepreneurial globally. This is not merely a demographic reality, but it is Africa’s greatest economic advantage. Yet financing gaps persist. Market access remains uneven. Informality continues to suppress growth.
Empowering women and youth is not a social gesture; it is an economic strategy. When women thrive, economies expand; When youth innovate, productivity rises; When opportunity is shared, stability follows. Africa, therefore, cannot achieve prosperity while half of its potential is underfinanced and its majority underutilised.
The African Union, working with partners such as the African Development Bank, Afreximbank and the Africa Guarantee Fund, is expanding access to finance and strengthening enterprise ecosystems. But finance alone is not enough. Prosperity requires policy coherence, infrastructure, skills, mobility, and above all, political will.
Africa’s integration will not be defeated by a lack of ideas, only by a lack of courage to implement them. Critical AU instruments, including the Free Movement Protocol, the Single African Air Transport Market, the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System and the Protocol on Women and Youth in Trade, must now move decisively from agreement to action. The era of signing must give way to the era of delivering.
Africa’s prosperity will not be imported but built by Africans – Built by our entrepreneurs; Powered by our innovation; and Sustained through our collaboration. History will remember our generation not for the agreements we signed, but for the opportunities we unlocked for Africa’s women, youth and entrepreneurs. If we get this right, Africa will not merely participate in global trade; Africa will help shape it.
The future of this great continent of ours will not be written solely in Presidential palaces or corporate boardrooms. It will be written by the small business with a big idea, the young innovator bold enough to disrupt the status quo, and the woman entrepreneur transforming her community. This has to be the generation that moved Africa from fragmentation to unity, from potential to productivity, from promise to prosperity. And let history record this final truth: When Africa stood at the crossroads of integration, we did not hesitate – we chose courage, unity, and action.