The Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) was adopted by the 10th Extraordinary Session of the Assembly of the African Union (AU) in Kigali, Rwanda on 21 March 2018 and entered into force on 30 May 2019.
The Agreement paved the way for the commencement of the operational phase of the AfCFTA in July 2019. According to Article 23 of the consolidated text of the AfCFTA, protocols entered into force thirty days after the deposit of the twenty-second (22nd) instrument of ratification.
The status of the AfCFTA at the time this article was written, is that 54 out of 55 member states have become signatories, while 46 out of the 54 signatory states have submitted their instruments of ratification to the AU.
Recently, the AU approved the AfCFTA draft protocols on investment, intellectual property rights, and competition policy for members which both constitute the near completion of phase two of the agreement establishing the AfCFTA with the exception of the protocol on women and youth in trade and digital trade scheduled for later in 2023.
Phase one comprised the approval of the drafts on the protocols on trade in goods, in trade in services, and protocol on rules and procedures on the settlement of disputes and their respective annexes.
The detailed Article is available for download as a PDF file below: