This booklet provides a guide to the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and how it fits within Africa’s broader development agenda – the architecture of the AfCFTA Agreement, what the Agreement covers, institutional arrangements, committees and other AfCFTA initiatives. This edition includes an update on the Guided Trade Initiative.

The booklet also offers an overview of intra-African (based on the up-to-date direct trade data from 26 African countries as at end of September 2022) and intra-REC trade in goods (agricultural trade, trade in commodities, non-commodity and non-agriculture trade); African trade in services; and trade facilitation performance.

Further information on the AfCFTA negotiations, as well as the legal texts of the AfCFTA Agreement and ratification status of the legal instruments, is available on tralac’s AfCFTA resources page.

Readers are encouraged to quote and reproduce this material for educational, non-profit purposes, provided the source is acknowledged.