The Secretary-General of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), His Excellency Wamkele Mene, has held high-level talks with Tunisia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mohamed Ali Nafti, on the sidelines of the 39th African Union (AU) Summit in Addis Ababa, with both leaders committing to translating Tunisia’s founding membership of the trade bloc into active, inclusive economic engagement.
During the meeting, Minister Nafti underscored Tunisia’s commitment to reactivating mechanisms for economic and trade cooperation within the AfCFTA framework, stressing the need to accelerate completion of the next steps to ensure its effective operation and drive stronger continental economic integration.
The two leaders addressed a broad agenda spanning private sector mobilisation, trade corridor development, digitisation of cross-border processes, and the need to ensure that the agreement’s benefits flow directly to women, youth, and small businesses. Both acknowledged that while governments can reduce barriers and create enabling conditions, it is ultimately businesses that generate the trade and investment flows the AfCFTA is designed to unleash.
Digital trade featured prominently in the discussions. The AfCFTA Protocol on Digital Trade, one of the agreement’s most forward-looking instruments, provides a governance framework for electronic commerce, trusted data flows, and the modernisation of cross-border trading systems. For Tunisia, which has invested substantially in digital infrastructure and hosts a growing technology sector, the protocol opens pathways to modernise customs procedures, adopt electronic documentation, implement digital payment systems, and build competitive e-commerce platforms that can reduce the time and cost of trading across African borders.
The AfCFTA Secretariat has placed digital tools at the centre of its operational strategy, including the E-Tariff Book, a digitalised database providing importers and exporters with precise tariff information by product and country, and the Rules of Origin Manual to assist businesses in complying with trade regulations. The Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) further enables businesses to transact in local African currencies, though uptake remains an area of active focus.
Both Secretary-General Mene and Minister Nafti reaffirmed that the success of the AfCFTA cannot be measured in trade statistics alone. The agreement’s dedicated Protocol on Women and Youth in Trade commits member states to dismantling the specific structural barriers that prevent women and young entrepreneurs from fully participating in and benefiting from continental commerce. Women traders form the backbone of cross-border commerce across much of Africa, and young entrepreneurs represent the continent’s most dynamic economic constituency.
Secretary-General Mene has consistently argued that building a fully interoperable and integrated African digital economy is no longer aspirational but an urgent operational priority, a position that aligns directly with the agenda discussed with Minister Nafti.
The bilateral engagement signals that Tunisia, as a founding AfCFTA signatory with significant industrial and digital capacity, is prepared to move from formal participation to substantive leadership within the continental trade framework.
