Africa must scrap trade barriers to unlock food markets: AU agency chief

Africa must urgently dismantle trade and logistical barriers preventing food from moving across its borders if the continent is to turn its agricultural potential into stronger regional markets, jobs and food security, the head of the African Union Development Agency-NEPAD (A

UDA-NEPAD) said Friday.

Nardos Bekele-Thomas, AUDA-NEPAD’s director-general, told the Africa Food Systems Forum summit in Kigali that Africa faces a paradox: despite significant agricultural production and opportunities to compete in global markets, its food markets remain fragmented, leaving farmers struggling to find buyers while consumers face high and volatile prices.

“Surplus production in one part of the continent too often fails to reach the deficit markets elsewhere,” she said.

“Even as significant volumes of food continue to be imported from outside the continent, farmers struggle to access markets. Processors operate below capacity and consumers are confronted with high and volatile food prices.”

Bekele-Thomas said implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) offers an opportunity to address these structural weaknesses by integrating African food markets and removing barriers to intra-African agricultural trade.

But she said the pact’s success should ultimately be judged by whether this integration leads to increased trade in intra-African agricultural products across our borders.

She called for the development of food corridors linking production zones with processing centres and high-demand markets, saying they could reduce post-harvest losses and transport costs while strengthening regional supply chains and resilience to climate shocks.

“In so doing, food corridors have the potential to transform agriculture from a largely subsistence activity into a competitive source of enterprise, job creation and, of course, exports,” she said.

However, she warned physical infrastructure alone would not be sufficient, calling for interoperable customs systems, greater transport and logistics investment, and a bigger role for development finance institutions.

She said the challenge could not be solved by individual countries acting alone, since agricultural value chains increasingly span national borders, with production potentially competitive in one country, processing capacity located in another and the strongest market opportunity found elsewhere.

Bekele-Thomas praised Rwanda’s leadership in advancing the AfCFTA’s agricultural trade agenda, but said the focus must now shift from policy commitments to implementation, urging stronger collaboration between governments, the private sector, financiers and farmers.

“Our collective effort therefore must focus on removing the constraints that prevent African agricultural products from moving competitively across borders,” she said, calling for increased value addition and the elimination of both tariff and non-tariff barriers to intra-African trade.

Her remarks come as African governments and development partners increasingly focus on transforming the continent’s food systems from fragmented national markets into integrated regional and continental value chains.