Greening the AfCFTA: It is not too late

Environmental sustainability is a key component of Africa’s Agenda 2063, yet the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) — launched on 1 January 2021 — contains only minimal references to the environment, limited to preambular language and general exceptions clauses. This policy brief, published by the Africa Growth Initiative at the Brookings Institution, argues that it is not too late to strengthen the linkages between the AfCFTA and Africa’s environmental agenda, and identifies concrete strategies for doing so across the agreement’s different negotiating phases.

The brief begins by situating the AfCFTA within the broader context of Africa’s environmental challenges. Despite contributing the least to global warming in absolute and per capita terms, Africa is predicted to suffer the most severe impacts of climate change — threatening the very economic benefits the AfCFTA is expected to deliver. At the same time, the emergence of ambitious green trade agendas in major economies, particularly the European Green Deal and its associated regulatory measures, creates both competitive pressures and new imperatives for Africa to position itself strategically in a greening global economy.

The brief then examines how the AfCFTA’s existing and forthcoming protocols and annexes can be leveraged to advance environmental objectives. With respect to concluded protocols and annexes, it identifies opportunities to reduce tariffs on environmental goods, liberalise environmental services, and use the Technical Barriers to Trade and Sanitary and Phytosanitary Annexes to promote environmental standards and controls on the import of environmentally harmful products. With respect to ongoing tariff and services negotiations, it argues that State Parties should strategically link market access commitments with environmental objectives. For Phase II and Phase III negotiations — covering investment, intellectual property, competition, and e-commerce — the brief identifies specific provisions that could make the AfCFTA’s environmental dimension more explicit and direct, including investor obligations to protect the environment, provisions supporting the transfer of green technologies, and a digital enabling environment that supports Africa’s green transition.

The brief concludes by calling on the AfCFTA Secretariat to explore the possibility of adding a Protocol on the Environment and Sustainable Development, a step that would allow State Parties to address environmental challenges of specific relevance to Africa’s sustainable development agenda in a more systematic and legally binding way.