Africa in the World Trade Organization

This paper published as a chapter in How Africa Trades — edited by David Luke of the LSE Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa and published by LSE Press — provides an in-depth analysis of Africa’s engagement with the World Trade Organization (WTO). With over a quarter of the WTO’s 164-country membership being African, the paper argues that the WTO’s functioning and reform agenda have significant implications for the continent’s development trajectory.
The paper explores how African agency at the WTO is exercised to achieve pro-development results against the backdrop of major geopolitical shifts, anti-globalisation sentiments, the re-emergence of economic nationalism, the digital revolution, and an increasingly urgent climate crisis. It examines the institutional architecture of the WTO through an African lens, assessing how existing rules, negotiating modalities, and dispute settlement mechanisms serve — or fail to serve — the interests of African economies.

A central argument is that Africa’s relationship with the WTO is shaped by competing narratives about the role of multilateral trade governance in development. One narrative emphasises the WTO as a rules-based system that provides predictability, transparency, and protection for smaller economies against unilateral actions by larger powers. Another highlights the asymmetries built into WTO agreements, the insufficient operationalisation of Special and Differential Treatment (SDT) provisions, and the organisation’s failure to deliver on key development priorities such as agricultural reform and duty-free, quota-free market access for LDCs. The authors argue that strengthening Africa’s role in the WTO requires bridging these narratives through a pragmatic approach that acknowledges both the potential and the limitations of the multilateral trading system, advocating for strategic engagement on issues of direct importance to African economies — including climate-related trade measures, digital trade, services liberalisation, and the integration of the AfCFTA with WTO commitments.

The paper concludes that the WTO’s long-term relevance for Africa will depend in part on institutional reforms that make the organisation more responsive to development needs, and in part on African countries’ own capacity to articulate and pursue their trade policy objectives in a rapidly evolving global landscape.

How Africa Trades is a data-led volume examining Africa’s trade relationships, negotiating priorities, and policy challenges across a range of issues — from intra-African trade and the AfCFTA to digital trade, climate, and engagement with the multilateral trading system. The full volume is available open access via LSE Press here.