The AfCFTA's Pilot Programme Has Kicked Off: A Status Update

Trade operations under the Africa Free Continental Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) have begun, with Kenya shipping its first batches of locally-made car batteries and tea to Ghana. This process was made possible following the launch of the Guided Trade Initiative by the AfCFTA's Secretariat – an initiative aimed at testing and demonstrating the efficacy of the legal framework of the AfCFTA instruments and obtaining feedback from the institutional national systems in the participating countries.

As part of this initiative, eight countries were selected to provisionally start trading goods under the AfCFTA on a pilot basis: Kenya, Rwanda, Cameroon, Ghana, Tanzania, Mauritius, Tunisia, and Egypt. The selection of the countries was meant to ensure representation from each of the existing trading blocks and focused on those countries that have their tariff offers on goods fully approved and officially published.