Managing Director of Access Bank Plc, Roosevelt Ogbonna, has called for stronger collaboration among policymakers, financiers and businesses to accelerate trade within Africa and unlock the continent’s economic potential.
 
He made the call at the Access Bank Africa Trade Conference (ATC 2026), saying Africa must address structural barriers that continue to limit the growth of intra-continental commerce despite its vast market opportunities.
  
He noted that Africa’s share of global trade remained relatively small, stressing that fragmented trade corridors and structural bottlenecks continue to hinder the growth of commerce across the continent.
  
Ogbonna explained that stakeholders at last year’s conference agreed on three key priorities for transforming Africa’s trade landscape, including breaking down silos between policymakers, financial institutions and businesses; building a trade ecosystem driven by reliable data and analytics and developing systems that support both large corporations and smaller businesses seeking to expand across borders.
  
He noted that the 2026 edition of the conference is a continuation of efforts to drive meaningful progress in intra-African trade.
 
According to him, since the last edition of the conference, some progress has been made across key sectors of the economy.
 
Ogbonna also pointed to the growing role of technology platforms in reducing friction in areas such as payments, logistics and market access.
  
He, however, acknowledged that the gains remained uneven across the continent, with progress concentrated in a few markets and specific trade corridors.

Speaking on the need for stronger infrastructure financing in growing intra-African trade, Director-General, Southern Africa at the African Development Bank (AfDB), Kennedy Mbekeani, called for stronger mobilisation of private capital to finance critical infrastructure required to unlock the full potential of Africa’s trade integration.
  
Opening up on Africa’s perspective to the drive for intra-African trade, Zambia’s Minister of Commerce, Trade and Industry, Chipoka Mulenga, speaking during the ministerial panel discussion of the conference, noted that policy alignment among African countries would be critical to unlocking the continent’s trade potential.
  
“Policy is very important in making anything come together. It must be consistent, resilient and coherent. If intra-African trade must be enhanced, we must deliberately craft policies that speak the same language across our countries. We should leverage our comparative advantages, rather than competing with one another,” Mulenga stated.
   
Also speaking, Ghana’s Minister for Trade, Agribusiness and Industry, Elizabeth Ajare, noted that Africa does not lack policy frameworks, rather struggles with harmonised implementation.
  
Ajare further stressed that countries must be willing to compromise and adopt mutual recognition frameworks to facilitate trade across borders.
  
“If we insist on verifying every product independently, we will not make progress. Harmonising standards and recognising each other’s certification processes will allow us to trade more efficiently,” she added.
 
Speaking in the same vein, Botswana’s Minister of Trade and Entrepreneurship, Tiroeaone Ntsima, noted that African governments must focus on creating enabling environments that allow businesses and investors to drive economic growth.

Ogbonna urged stakeholders to move beyond dialogue and take concrete steps that will strengthen trade relationships among African countries, emphasising that Africa’s economic transformation would depend largely on the willingness of businesses and institutions to collaborate more effectively.