African trade and regulatory officials have called for a continent-wide harmonised competition framework to strengthen fairness and improve market regulation under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), warning that fragmented national systems could undermine the single market agenda.
The call was made during discussions at the third edition of Biashara Afrika in Togo, a pan-African business and investment forum organised by the AfCFTA Secretariat, where participants examined how to address regulatory gaps affecting cross-border trade.
Officials said without a unified protocol on competition, Africa’s emerging single market could be exposed to risks such as market abuse, cartels, monopolistic behaviour and unfair trade practices that distort competition and disadvantage smaller economies.
Simeon Koffi, director-general of the ECOWAS Regional Competition Authority, said inconsistencies between national legal frameworks, weak enforcement capacity and cross-border anti-competitive practices remain major obstacles to effective regulation.
He also cited limited institutional funding, the dominance of informal economic activity and barriers to market entry as additional challenges affecting competition oversight across West Africa.
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Koffi said while ECOWAS has made progress in establishing regional competition rules, implementation gaps remain significant, requiring deeper coordination between regional bodies and the continental competition authority under the AfCFTA framework.
“Purely national solutions have shown their limits,” he said, calling for stronger collaboration between regional competition authorities and the AfCFTA-level regulatory structure.
Togolese trade official Claude Talime Abe echoed the concerns, stressing that a unified competition protocol is essential to ensure fairness, transparency and regulatory certainty across Africa’s integrated market.
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He said competition policy must go beyond declarations and be backed by practical enforcement mechanisms capable of supporting sustainable trade and investment.
AfCFTA Secretary-General Wamkele Mene said the implementation of the continental trade agreement has highlighted the importance of strong competition policy and other regulatory tools needed to support an integrated market.
He said the AfCFTA framework already includes provisions that define jurisdictional cooperation between national, regional and continental authorities to ensure regulatory complementarity.
“We have built into the treaty these legal complementarities to enable national authorities and regional authorities to continue their work in a complementary manner,” Mene said.
He added that the goal is to establish a common competition policy and legal framework that benefits both large and small economies while ensuring fair outcomes for consumers across the continent.
The discussions come as African countries continue to implement the AfCFTA, the world’s largest free trade area by number of participating states, which aims to boost intra-African trade by reducing tariffs and non-tariff barriers.
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However, experts say that without strong enforcement of competition rules, the benefits of market integration could be unevenly distributed, particularly in economies with weaker regulatory institutions.
Participants at the forum called for accelerated efforts to finalise and operationalise a continental competition protocol that would align national laws and strengthen regulatory cooperation across Africa’s regional blocs.
The proposals are expected to feed into ongoing AfCFTA negotiations aimed at deepening regulatory integration and improving the functioning of the continent’s single market.
