The Amahoro Coalition brought a rarely heard voice to Accra’s most prominent continental trade summit last month, arguing that Africa’s borderless ambitions under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) will fall short unless they explicitly include the tens of millions of young people living in forced displacement.
The Africa Prosperity Dialogues (APD) 2026, held from 4 to 6 February at the Accra International Conference Centre, drew over 7,000 delegates from 104 countries for three days of talks under the theme “Empowering Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), Women and Youth in Africa’s Single Market: Innovate. Collaborate. Trade.”
Amahoro’s Principal Strategy Custodian for Growth, Bathsheba Asati, joined a panel examining how youth creativity and continental mobility intersect with AfCFTA’s potential to generate soft power. Her central argument upended a common assumption in policy circles. “Our research at Amahoro has shown that when it comes to movement and trade there are no stark differences in terms of experience between refugees and non-refugees,” she said. “Where policies work, they work for both, and where they don’t work, they don’t work for both.”
Asati’s contribution pressed the summit on the human cost of restrictive mobility frameworks. “Whether mobility is legalised or not, people will always move. The question is: do we want them to move formally or informally? The more limiting the policies are, the higher the cost and risk of movement,” she said, calling on governments to implement existing commitments rather than adding new policy layers.
The dialogues also served as the official launchpad for the Make Africa Borderless Now campaign, a civic mobilisation drive targeting 10 million signatures across the continent and diaspora, with the petition aimed at pressing African heads of state to implement AU protocols and AfCFTA instruments they have already adopted. Organisers plan to present the signatures to the AU at its 40th Assembly in February 2027.
For Amahoro, the campaign’s goals align directly with the realities facing communities the Coalition works with. Borders, Asati noted, are not abstract policy constructs for people in displacement. They shape whether a qualification is recognised, whether a product can cross a checkpoint and whether a business can survive.
APD organisers said the emphasis on women, youth and SMEs was deliberate and central to the Africa Prosperity Network’s strategy, rather than symbolic. “We didn’t treat youth and women as side conversations,” Chief Operations Officer Kofi Nyarko-Pong said. “These are the groups that will drive the single market.”
Amahoro Fellows contributed to separate sessions on industrialisation, youth enterprise and green innovation, demonstrating how businesses rooted in displacement-affected communities generate local jobs and engage in cross-border trade. The coalition’s broader case was that policy design for inclusion cannot be an afterthought. “For inclusive policy making, women and youth should be included in decision-making conversations to understand how they operate and how they work,” Asati said.
