- September 11, 2026
- Posted by: AITCR 3
- Category: News
Dear members and partners,
Africa keeps repeating one statistic until it has lost its power to shock: women make up somewhere between two-thirds and three-quarters of the continent’s informal cross-border traders. It shows up in African Union reports, World Bank diagnostics, ECOWAS papers and UN Women data alike. What changes from report to report isn’t the number – it is what institutions plan to do about it.
2026 has been a busy year for that question. Between a regional conference in our own city, a continental protocol most traders have never heard of, a domestic policy push, and a new wave of fintech pilots at the border, there is enough real movement to take stock of. This edition looks at five developments shaping whether AfCFTA’s promise of a single African market actually extends to the women who already do most of the continent’s trading – and closes with a way for you to help AITCR make that case with better evidence.
The $3.4 Trillion Question: What HerAfCFTA in Abuja Confirmed
In June 2026, Abuja hosted the inaugural HerAfCFTA Regional Conference, under the theme “Women Advancing Africa’s Economic Transformation through Intra-African Trade: Scaling Impact.” Ministers, trade commissioners, development partners and women entrepreneurs from across the continent were in the room, and the warning from the podium was blunt: the UN’s assistant secretary general and Regional Bureau for Africa director, Ahunna Eziakonwa, argued that women remain the backbone of Africa’s informal and small business economy, yet stay locked out of the policies, capital and infrastructure needed to grow their enterprises across borders.
The figure attached to that exclusion is the one that should concentrate minds in boardrooms and ministries alike: AfCFTA’s ambition to build the world’s largest single market – valued in the conference’s framing at $3.4 trillion – was described as unrealisable unless governments move faster to dismantle the structural barriers still facing female traders and entrepreneurs.
For AITCR, the conference is a useful marker. It confirms that “women in trade” has moved from a side-panel topic to a headline concern for AfCFTA’s own architects – which means the data and advocacy work our members do on this issue now has a much more receptive audience in Abuja and beyond.
There is Already a Rulebook – Is Anyone Using It?
Long before HerAfCFTA convened, African Union Heads of State had already adopted a legal answer to this problem: the AfCFTA Protocol on Women and Youth in Trade, signed at the 37th Ordinary Session of the AU Assembly in February 2024. It is, in effect, Africa’s blueprint for making sure a continental trade agreement doesn’t quietly widen the gender gap it was never designed to consider.
The Protocol isn’t symbolic. It commits AfCFTA institutions to concrete measures: guaranteed representation for women and youth within AfCFTA’s own governance structures, targeted capacity-building programmes, and – critically for the small-scale traders who cross land borders daily – a simplified trade regime designed to move them out of informal, unprotected trading and into the formal system where they can actually benefit from tariff preferences.
The catch is awareness. Multiple 2026 assessments of AfCFTA implementation have found that reported progress on paper often runs ahead of what traders experience at the border – and a Protocol that traders don’t know exists cannot protect them. This is exactly the kind of gap AITCR’s trade literacy and advocacy work exists to close.
Nigeria’s Bet: From Border Hustle to Production Hub
Closer to home, Nigeria’s Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Dr Jumoke Oduwole, used a March 2026 colloquium in Abuja – held under the theme “Positioning Nigeria to Lead Intra-African Trade” – to make the domestic case plainly. She told the audience that unlocking the productive capacity of women-led enterprises and drawing them into formal trade systems is central to Nigeria’s ambition to lead intra-African trade under AfCFTA.
The framing matters. Rather than treating women traders as a welfare or inclusion issue, the Minister positioned them as an underused industrial asset – arguing that Nigeria’s real opportunity lies in becoming a production hub that manufactures, processes and exports at scale, not a market that simply consumes what others make.
For AITCR’s Nigerian members, this is a policy signal worth watching closely: government rhetoric is shifting toward treating women’s formalisation as an industrialisation strategy, not a side programme. That shift tends to precede funding and regulatory changes.
Where the Money Actually Moves: Fintech at the Border
Policy frameworks matter, but the persistent complaint from women traders across every region of Africa is the same: access to finance. Two stories from 2026 show different attempts to close that gap.
In Central Africa, the UN Economic Commission for Africa launched a regional project in June 2026 – implemented across Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Gabon and Equatorial Guinea – specifically to strengthen the capacity of women-owned informal cross-border businesses and pull them toward formal, regional trade. The research behind the project is sobering: in the Cameroon–Gabon–Equatorial Guinea tri-border area, women account for 67% of informal cross-border trade operators, and 71% of them report only a limited understanding of the customs and trade procedures that govern their own businesses.
Further west, The Gambia’s Ministry of Trade, Industry, Regional Integration and Employment held a conclave in early September 2026 aimed squarely at boosting financial access for women in cross-border trade through financial technology, with EU development partners pushing for an evidence-based approach to financial inclusion rather than one-off interventions.
Read together, the pattern is clear: the barrier isn’t awareness of AfCFTA anymore, it’s the practical machinery – customs literacy, credit history, collateral, digital rails – that turns market access into an actual sale. This is precisely the terrain AITCR’s own research and member-facing tools are built to map.
We Want to Hear From You
Africa International Trade and Commerce Research (AITCR) and Afrik’Act Research and Consulting are conducting a 2-minute survey as part of TradeMark Africa’s Making Trade Work for Women in West Africa project. The survey will help identify and address gender-related barriers faced by women cross-border traders. All responses are confidential and will be used only for the project.
If you are a woman who trades across borders, please complete the survey. If you support women cross-border traders, please share the survey with women cross-border traders, associations, colleagues, and relevant networks.
What This Means for AITCR’s Community
For women traders and entrepreneurs: the Protocol on Women and Youth in Trade already gives you a formal claim to simplified trade procedures – knowing it exists is the first step to using it.
For policymakers: the direction of travel across Abuja, Yaoundé and Banjul in 2026 is the same – move from announcing frameworks to measuring whether clearance times, financing approvals and formalisation rates are actually improving for women traders.
For financial institutions and fintech partners: the demand signal from three separate 2026 initiatives is consistent – credit history and collateral requirements built for formal SMEs don’t fit the realities of informal cross-border trade, and the institutions that solve for that first will capture a large, underserved market.
For AITCR members generally: the conversation has shifted from whether women’s trade participation matters to how fast institutions can close the implementation gap. That is exactly the kind of shift where data, advocacy and member voices carry weight – which is why the survey above matters.
Looking Ahead
Our next edition turns to a different but connected question: who gets to claim ownership of African innovation – and what that has to do with where Africa’s next trade opportunities are being built.
Source: HerAfCFTA Regional Conference, Abuja, June 2026 | African Union – AfCFTA Protocol on Women and Youth in Trade; UN Economic Commission for Africa | National Assembly Library Complex colloquium, Abuja, March 2026 (Vanguard News) | UN Economic Commission for Africa (Central Africa Subregional Office, June 2026); The Point, Banjul (September 2026)
