AfCFTA: Africa Trades Just 5% of Its Digital Services within its Own Borders

Nigeria seeks to unlock the untapped opportunity by overhauling business classifications to help digital firms expand across African markets, Francis Onyemachi, reports:

Only 5% of Africa’s digitally delivered services are currently traded within the continent, presenting a significant untapped opportunity for intra-African trade, investment and digital transformation.

This was stated by Dr Jumoke Oduwole, Nigeria’s minister for Industry Trade and Investment, at the 2nd AfCFTA Digital Trade Forum.

Held in Lagos on Tuesday, July, 1, 2026, Oduwole said Nigeria is taking deliberate steps to unlock the opportunities offered by digital trade under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).

“Nigeria’s approach to unlocking that opportunity has been deliberate and consultative. In April 2025, FMITI undertook the first comprehensive mapping of Nigeria’s digital services ecosystem. Through that exercise, we developed Africa’s first directory of digital services firms, disaggregated by sector, and identified five priority expansion markets for Nigerian businesses including  Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda and South Africa,” she said.

Oduwale added that the mapping exercise also revealed an important policy gap.

She said many digital businesses no longer fit neatly into traditional industry classifications, making it necessary to update existing frameworks.

“Many digital businesses no longer fit neatly within traditional industry classifications. We are therefore updating our business classification framework to better reflect today’s digital economy, ensuring that our policies, incentives and support programmes are designed around the businesses that are actually driving growth.”

The minister also noted that trade ministers, policymakers and technical experts from across Africa recently met in Abuja to review progress on the implementation of the AfCFTA and discuss ways to expand Intra-African Trade.

“Over the past few days, Trade Ministers, policymakers and technical experts gathered in Abuja to review progress on implementing the African Continental Free Trade Area and to consider what more is required to unlock its full potential. Those discussions reinforced an important point: negotiating this agreement was only the beginning. The real value lies in whether businesses can leverage it to scale across our continent.”

Oduwale said governments have a responsibility to build an ecosystem that makes it easier for startups and digital businesses to grow across Africa.

“We often speak about Africa’s unicorns when we talk about digital trade and the digital economy. The ecosystem we celebrate today was built by founders who had to be exceptionally resilient just to get started, and even more resilient to scale.

“Our responsibility now is to ensure that the next generation does not have to rely on that same level of resilience. That it becomes easier to build, easier to scale, and easier for capital to find great businesses. That is what success should look like. That is how we move from ambition to implementation,” she said.

The minister said Nigeria has already built a strong foundation for digital trade through its fintech ecosystem, ICT sector and innovation landscape, but stressed that harmonised policies are needed to support seamless cross-border transactions.

“If a business can build a world-class product in Lagos but struggles to receive payments in another African market or navigate different regulatory requirements every time it crosses a border, then we have not yet unlocked the full promise of the AfCFTA. That is the work ahead of us. It is also the challenge and the opportunity that brings us together today.

“Nigeria’s digital economy already provides a strong foundation for this work. ICT contributes close to 18% of our GDP. Nigeria is home to approximately 28% of Africa’s fintech companies, and more than 60% of Nigerians are under the age of 25, giving us one of Africa’s largest pools of digital talent,” she added.

She added that while Nigeria’s digital ecosystem is expanding commendably, growth must be sustained through the creation of a policy environment that supports innovation and enables businesses to thrive across African markets.

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