4 November 2025 · AFU-RES-2026-01
AfCFTA Digital Trade Readiness among West African SMEs: Evidence from Accra, Abidjan and Lagos
Dr. Amina Diallo · African Future University — School of Business
The African Continental Free Trade Area will only raise living standards if firms that already trade informally can meet rules of origin, e-invoicing and cross-border payments without relocating to a coastal headquarters. This paper surveys 412 SME owner-managers in Accra, Abidjan and Lagos and pairs the results with customs process maps from three national single windows. We find that digital trade friction is not primarily a shortage of software. It is a shortage of staff who can interpret origin rules in both English and French, keep a ledger that survives a generator outage, and evidence a shipment for a buyer in another REC. Firms that completed an AFU working-professional MBA module on trade operations were 1.8 times more likely to have filed a complete electronic certificate of origin in the previous year, controlling for firm size and sector. The implication for African Future University is practical. Capstones should be scored on whether a student’s own firm can complete one real AfCFTA document trail, not on whether the student can recite the treaty. Policy partners in ECOWAS should treat tuition-free digital business education as trade facilitation infrastructure, equivalent in importance to a scanner at the port.