The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Secretariat has revealed that the continent loses an estimated $5 billion every year due to heavy reliance on foreign currencies—particularly the U.S. dollar and euro—for intra-African trade settlements.
According to Ghana Web, the situation continues to raise the cost of doing business across the continent, saying the losses have become a major barrier to Africa’s economic growth and competitiveness.
Speaking at the second International Conference on Environment, Social, Governance (ESG) and Sustainable Development of Africa (ICESDA 2025) in Accra, the Director for Coordination and Programmes at AfCFTA, Dr Tsotetsi Makong, said the Secretariat has identified similar losses in digital transactions and is developing measures to address them. Dr Makong also underscored the need for African countries to consolidate their resources to attract large-scale investments, stressing that no single nation can achieve sustainable development alone.
“Remember, we’ve been fragmented, and these artificial borders have been created. Nobody is going to invest in Ghana because Ghana is too small to attract huge investment. But if you put Nigeria together, Togo together, and you create one single market, which is what we’re doing in the AfCFTA, you increase the possibility and the potential for investments to be made in the continent.” “Otherwise, individually, no single African country can advance. It doesn’t matter what we have in our national Vision 2020, Vision 30. All of those things—the markets are very small to justify huge investments. For the investments that we require, we need to make sure that we pull together as countries,” he added.
