LONDON. 7 July 2025 — In a world racing toward regionalism, the Africa integration story often gets obscured by its own complexity. Yet last week in London, a compelling narrative emerged — one of deliberate transformation, driven not only by policy frameworks but by the quiet, technical work of institutions that understand trade from the ground up.
TradeMark Africa’s (TMA) Board Chair and former Ethiopian Prime Minister, H.E. Hailemariam Desalegn, led a high-level mission to the United Kingdom last week, carrying a message of urgency and opportunity. With TMA CEO Dave Beer, H.E. Desalegn’s engagements at the Africa Debate 2025, bilateral talks with UK ministers, and a landmark parliamentary roundtable at the Labour African Network made one point clear: for Africa to grow, it must grow together.
“A landmark decision by African leaders was the establishment of the Africa Free Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA),” said Hailemariam during the opening panel at Africa Debate 2025. “The AfCFTA ushered alignment, but now we need to make the trade corridors work — not just for the movement of goods, but for the flow of value, investment, and opportunity across borders.”
The event’s focus — unlocking regional value chains — is at the centre of Africa’s industrial and economic future. Alongside AfCFTA Secretary General Wamkele Mene, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Africa) Rt. Hon. Lord Collins of Highbury, and Nigerian Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment H.E. Jumoke Oduwole, Hailemariam spotlighted the region’s challenges and opportunities. Among them: fragmented policies, underutilised infrastructure, and political hesitancy due to perceived diminishing political power that too often trump economic logic.
“Creation of regional value chains faces a monumental hurdle — fragmentation,” he noted at a closed-door roundtable hosted by the Labour African Network. “Our reality is that integration eats into leaders’ political power, yet the economic benefits far surpass efforts to go it alone.”
Indeed, the TMA delegation shared its a decade and half facilitating trade facilitation initiatives in Africa, reinforcing that integration is not just a bureaucratic goal — it is a developmental imperative. TMA has spearheaded over 200 trade facilitation projects across Africa , from upgrading ports to digitising cross-border processes. This has resulted to faster trade, lower costs, higher private sector confidence — and growing evidence that Africa’s future lies in value-added, intra-regional trade.
In back-to-back meetings with UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy, Development Minister Rt. Hon. Baroness Chapman of Darlington, and Africa Minister Rt. Hon. Lord Collins of Highbury, the TMA team pushed for deeper UK-Africa trade partnerships that strengthen AfCFTA’s architecture and invest in corridors that connect markets and people.
Because this is also about peace.
“Countries that trade together uphold peace. Insecurity equals poverty,” Hailemariam said. “There is need to address economic issues. Need free movement of people to plug the gaps in human capital in some countries. Perhaps, very soon, we will have an African passport.”
It is a vision at once bold and pragmatic: to transform border posts into gateways of prosperity, and trade corridors into arteries of peace. With continental frameworks like AfCFTA providing the scaffolding, that vision is inching closer to reality.
And as the UK Government recalibrates its Official Development Assistance expected to taper to 0.3% of GNI by 2027, the UK-Africa trade relationships and dialogue deepens, the question is no longer whether Africa can integrate — but how fast, and how far, it will go.
