Viewpoints Africa Africa’s greatest geopolitical weakness is not a lack of resources, talent, or ambition. It is fragmentation. In a world organised around blocs, Africa still negotiates as a collection of small economies, each pleading its case separately, each easy to ignore.
No serious power bargains this way.
Global influence belongs to those who aggregate scale. The United States negotiates as a continental market. China functions as a single industrial system. The European Union, despite its internal frictions, understands a basic rule of power: collective leverage outweighs national pride. Africa, by contrast, shows up to global negotiations as fifty-five proposals instead of one strategy.
Fragmentation is not accidental. It is structural and increasingly self-inflicted.
African countries trade more with distant partners than with their immediate neighbours. Internal borders inflate costs, stall goods, and destroy economies of scale. Non-tariff barriers, incompatible standards, duplicative regulations, and politicised customs regimes have turned African borders into economic choke points. In practice, it is often easier to trade with Europe or Asia than with the country next door.
The consequence is predictable and devastating. Industries that rely on scale never take off. Regional value chains remain shallow. Foreign investors dictate terms because African states arrive one by one, not together.
A fragmented continent cannot industrialise. A continent that cannot industrialise cannot command respect.
This is precisely what the African Continental Free Trade Area was designed to resolve. AfCFTA is often misunderstood as a trade agreement. In reality, it is a power project. Its true purpose is not tariff reduction. It is aggregation. It is the conversion of fifty-five small, vulnerable markets into one negotiating force capable of reshaping global calculations.
If fully implemented, AfCFTA creates something Africa has never had: scale with coordination. A unified market of over one billion people. A platform for regional manufacturing. A mechanism for shared standards. A foundation for bloc-based diplomacy and collective economic retaliation when necessary.
In short, AfCFTA is the infrastructure of African leverage.
Yet today, it is treated as a political achievement rather than a strategic weapon. Ratification has outpaced enforcement. Rhetoric has outpaced discipline. Governments commit to integration while quietly protecting domestic inefficiencies and vested interests. This gap between ambition and execution is not technical. It is political.
Power does not fail because of bad design. It fails because of weak commitment.
The exclusion of Africa from decisive global forums should be read through this lens. Fragmentation makes Africa easy to sideline because it cannot respond coherently. There is no unified trade position, no consolidated industrial strategy, no collective economic consequence for exclusion.
Global power does not punish outrage. It recalibrates leverage.
Fragmentation also corrodes Africa from within. Countries compete against each other for the same capital, offering tax holidays, regulatory exemptions, and concessions that cancel each other out. Instead of building regional value chains under AfCFTA, they duplicate ports, airports, and industrial zones that operate below scale. Instead of regional champions, they produce isolated enclaves.
This is not sovereignty. It is self-sabotage.
Sovereignty that cannot scale is performative.
If AfCFTA is to unlock Africa’s power, it must be enforced with seriousness. Non-tariff barriers must fall even when domestic lobbies resist. Standards must converge even when it disrupts entrenched interests. Industrial policy must be coordinated so neighbouring countries complement rather than cannibalise one another.
Power is built by alignment, not imitation.
External negotiations should default to bloc positions wherever possible. Trade agreements, strategic mineral deals, debt frameworks, and technology partnerships must increasingly be negotiated through collective African platforms anchored by AfCFTA. Fifty-five separate negotiations invite division. One coordinated position forces respect.
Infrastructure must follow the same logic. Power pools, rail corridors, ports, and digital infrastructure should connect African economies into a single production space. Prestige projects flatter leaders. Connectivity builds leverage.
Finally, Africa must institutionalise economic discipline within its integration agenda. AfCFTA cannot remain voluntary in spirit while the world operates on enforcement. Binding commitments, dispute resolution, and consequences for non-compliance are not optional. They are the price of power.
Integration is not idealism. It is dominance strategy.
No region has achieved geopolitical relevance while remaining economically fractured. Markets integrate before power consolidates. Supply chains lock in before influence matters. Respect follows capability.
Africa will not remain outside the room because others are hostile. It will remain outside if it refuses to act like a bloc.
The room does not exclude the fragmented. It simply moves on without them.
