Africa's Growing Economic Regions

A major institutional shift in African economic geography came with the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), whose founding agreement was signed by African Union member states in Kigali, Rwanda, in March 2018. The agreement entered into force in May 2019 after ratification by the required number of states, and trading under its framework formally began in January 2021. With 54 of the African Union's 55 members having signed on, AfCFTA is, by number of participating countries, the largest free trade area in the world, encompassing a combined population of roughly 1.3 billion people and a combined gross domestic product the African Union and World Bank have estimated at around 3.4 trillion dollars, with the explicit long-term goal of reducing tariffs on the large majority of traded goods and increasing intra-African trade, which has historically remained low relative to Africa's trade with Europe, Asia, and North America.