AfCFTA Implementation May Have Many Setbacks, But Money Isn’t One – ACET CEO Says

The claim that lack of money on the African continent is the cause of the sluggish implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) has been strongly disputed by the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the African Centre for Economic Transformation (ACET), Mavis Owusu-Gyamfi.

She maintains that money isn’t the problem but rather the lack of political will of the continent’s political leaders to implement the AfCFTA agreement they have signed.

Speaking at the 2025 Citi Business Forum in Accra under the theme “The Global Tariffs Dispute: Navigating Ghana‘s Recovery Strategy,” the ACET boss challenged both policymakers and development actors to stop hiding behind funding constraints and start addressing structural inefficiencies and governance failures sabotaging AfCFTA’s implementation.

She argues that misplaced financial priorities and a toothless tax system as the real culprits stalling progress on the continent’s most ambitious economic integration project.

She cannot fathom why a continent with huge sums of their pension funds lodged in the west attracting paltry interest bemoan of no funds to drive the implementation of AfCFTA.

Mavis Owusu-Gyamfi further noted that the continent is losing billions of revenues through illicit financial flows, funds that can propel the implementation of the trade agreement, she says, are just going down the drain.

One of the major culprits here, she says, are not only the politicians but the large multinational corporations that deploy various devious means to evade taxes and other financial obligations to their host countries.

“I will say political commitment. We sign the agreement, but then, when it comes to putting in place local policies and regulations to actually implement it, it becomes problematic. We like saying we don’t have money on the continent,” the CEO of ACET remarked.

She added that, “The problem is we have money, but it is deployed in the wrong way. We have pension funds that are garnering very low interest rates sitting in the US. Our tax system whenever we talk about illicit financial flows, we like to talk about the money our politicians are taking out. We don’t fight for the money that large international corporations are taking out that we are not getting back as taxes. So for me, money is not the problem.”

Her comments come at a time when many analysts believe the momentum around AfCFTA has slowed, even as the global economy is increasingly polarized by trade wars and shifting tariff regimes. Many cannot fathom why despite 5 years of AfCFTA implementation, intra-African trade remains low at around 18%.

For countries like Ghana, AfCFTA represents a rare chance to diversify export markets, attract manufacturing investment, and build regional value chains. Yet, the implementation lags, especially at the national level.

Mavis Owusu-Gyamfi is calling for the political will to drive the agenda and also challenging African leaders to look inward, marshal its own resources, reform its tax systems to drive the promising and transformative trade agreement.

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