By H.E. Alexandre Barro Chambrier, Vice-President of the Republic of Gabon
Africa finds itself today at a decisive crossroads of its economic sovereignty. It is no longer a time for diagnoses, but a time for courageous decisions, implementation, and measurable results. The African Continental Free Trade Area is more than a trade agreement: it is a structured political choice, a project of collective sovereignty, and a generational promise made to African youth. Yet, despite this historic potential, intra-African trade still represents only about 15 – 18% of the continent’s total trade, while it exceeds 60% in Europe and over 50% in Asia. Intra-community trade within the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC) and Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), remains very low and speaks to the scale of the challenge before us.
The Africa Prosperity Dialogues have championed a progressive and coherent rise in our collective ambition. In 2023, it was about moving from ambition to action. In 2024, the focus was on the need to produce in Africa and add value. In 2025, we recognised that infrastructure is the indispensable foundation of the single market. In 2026, we are taking a decisive step by placing productive African human capital at the heart of integration.
This trajectory echoes Kwame Nkrumah’s visionary warning that “Africa must unite or perish”. Today, this unity can no longer be only political; it must be economic, productive, and inclusive. The dialogues confirm an obvious truth: a single market without competitive SMEs, without fully integrated women entrepreneurs, and without productive youth would remain a legal architecture without a tangible economic reality.
African SMEs represent about 80% of jobs on the continent, but less than 20% of them participate today in cross-border trade. This gap is not an entrepreneurial failure; it reflects a deficit of access. Non-tariff barriers remain numerous and in various forms, such as complex customs procedures, divergent standards and certifications, prolonged border delays, or lack of information about the rules of origin and preferential tariffs. The AfCFTA remains a legal text for many African SMEs, rather than an operational economic tool. Initiatives launched in Accra, such as direct SME-investor matchmaking spaces and dedicated negotiation mechanisms, mark a turning point. The single market is starting to function as a real market.
The second major issue is the ratification and effective implementation of the AfCFTA protocol on women and youth. These groups constitute the majority of informal cross-border traders and continue to face limited access to public markets, persistent financing difficulties, and harassment at borders. According to available estimates, full implementation of this protocol could unlock over 15 billion USD in untapped economic value. Investing in women and youth is not a social choice; it is a rational economic choice, a choice of competitiveness, growth, and stability.
Given that Africa is the youngest continent in the world, failure to transform this human capital into productivity would turn a strategic asset into structural vulnerability.
Gabon is one of the pioneering countries that ratified the AfCFTA Agreement. Our country has seen an acceleration since 2023 in local transformation and is actively developing value chains around wood, manganese, and iron, with a clear ambition to make these resources an engine of sustainable, inclusive growth and job creation. To strengthen these value chains, Gabon is acting on several complementary levers, through investment in transport, energy, communication infrastructure, adoption of modern technologies to improve productivity, establishment of financing mechanisms adapted to business needs, simplification of administrative procedures, and improvement of the regulatory framework.
Due to its geographical position, Gabon also aspires to become a major gateway to Central Africa. With an 800-kilometre Atlantic coastline, a growing role in regional maritime trade, and an affirmed vocation as an air and logistics hub for the CEMAC sub-region, our country intends to contribute fully to regional and continental integration.
Since February 2026, the Gabonese Government has implemented a national AfCFTA strategy specifically dedicated to supporting local businesses, particularly SMEs, towards intra-African export. This development is part of the profound reshaping of the development model we have committed ourselves to since the adoption of the new Gabonese Constitution.
Indeed, African SMEs lack neither ideas nor audacity. What they lack is effective access to financing, public markets, regional value chains, logistics, and economic information. The AfCFTA must become an accelerator for SMEs and not a space reserved for already structured large companies.
Gabon calls for an AfCFTA resolutely oriented towards execution, an ambitious African public-private partnership, and continental cooperation based on trust, responsibility, and results. History will not judge our intentions; it will judge our ability to transform the African single market into a reality experienced by our peoples and not a deferred promise.