The Secretary-General of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), Wamkele Mene, has committed to developing a tailored national implementation strategy for Seychelles, acknowledging that the standard continental trade integration model requires significant adaptation for small island developing states whose geographic isolation creates structural barriers that mainland economies do not face.
The discussions were conducted on the margins of the 39th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of the African Union (AU) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where Seychelles Vice President Sebastien Pillay held high-level bilateral meetings with leadership of key AU organs to advance the island nation’s interests within the continental framework. During the meeting with Mene, Pillay expressed gratitude for the Secretariat’s work on the Seychelles Implementation Strategy and the Step-by-Step Guide.
The conversation addressed four interlocking challenges: transport and logistics constraints that raise the cost of moving goods to the African mainland, the potential of digital commerce to compensate for physical distance, access to the AfCFTA Adjustment Fund to finance structural reforms, and the design of implementation timelines that reflect Seychelles’ economic realities rather than a continental average.
A key point raised by Vice President Pillay was the importance of ensuring AfCFTA protects local producers during tariff liberalisation while guaranteeing that geographically isolated states are not marginalised within the integration process. The Secretary-General offered his full support and confirmed that working visits to Seychelles by both the AfCFTA Secretariat and the African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD) are already scheduled, with those missions focused on aligning continental programmes with Seychelles’ national priorities and identifying areas for technical support.
The AfCFTA Protocol on Digital Trade emerged as the most immediately actionable instrument for Seychelles. Unlike goods trade, which requires physical logistics, digital trade in services, content, and electronically delivered products can cross borders with limited infrastructure. For Seychelles, whose economy is dominated by tourism, the protocol offers a direct pathway for hospitality businesses to connect with African travellers, tour operators, and regional distribution partners across the continent’s 1.4 billion person market.
The AfCFTA Secretariat, in partnership with the Tony Blair Institute, IOTA Foundation, and World Economic Forum, launched the Africa Digital Access and Public Infrastructure for Trade (ADAPT) programme late last year, a unified digital infrastructure designed to replace Africa’s fragmented, paper-heavy cross-border trade systems. Early pilots in Kenya reduced border document retrieval times from up to seven hours to approximately 30 minutes. Continental expansion of ADAPT to all AfCFTA and AU member states is set for 2026, with legal, technical, and governance frameworks currently being finalised. Seychelles’ early engagement with the Secretariat positions it to access these systems from the outset rather than retrofitting later.
Mene has separately stressed that trade liberalisation cannot succeed in isolation from the free movement of people, warning that Africa’s single market risks remaining a paper framework rather than a functioning economic space unless borders are made genuinely permeable. “It is a matter of regret that Africans cannot travel up to 90 percent of Africa without a visa,” he said at a recent high-level meeting in Accra, calling for reforms backed by stronger political will at heads of state level.
For Seychelles, resolving connectivity and mobility constraints is not simply a trade facilitation question but a prerequisite for meaningful participation in what is, by number of participating countries, the world’s largest free trade area.
