The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Secretariat has signed a joint venture agreement with Ghana-based Quest Ghana Limited to build a digital trade corridor, as the continent pushes to more than double intra-African trade from roughly $200 billion to $500 billion and beyond.
The corridor — valued at $5.17 billion by Quest Ghana, though no financing commitment or capital figure has been disclosed — will combine a digital marketplace, an African Minerals and Commodities Exchange, and a continental interoperable payment system, alongside logistics infrastructure for trading, tracking, and settling minerals and commodities across the continent.
The agreement was signed in Accra on 31 August, following a memorandum of understanding in March and Cabinet approval by the Seychelles government in July. Seychelles will provide sovereign support for the joint venture and host its headquarters in Victoria, the island nation’s capital.
AfCFTA Secretary-General Wamkele Mene said the joint venture would give businesses — including micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises — the digital infrastructure needed to trade across the continent.
The corridor is being developed under AfCFTA’s Digital Trade Protocol, the framework governing cross-border digital commerce among the agreement’s 55 African Union member states.
Tackling a $5 billion payments problem
A central target of the initiative is Africa’s fragmented cross-border payments landscape. The AfCFTA Secretariat estimates that payments for intra-African trade currently cost more than $5 billion a year — a figure separate from the $5.17 billion valuation attached to the corridor itself. The proposed interoperable payment system is designed to reduce those costs and simplify settlement across markets that currently operate on disconnected infrastructure.
AfCFTA officials were clear that the new payment infrastructure will not replace national foreign-exchange systems. Central banks across member states will retain responsibility for setting exchange rates; the corridor will facilitate the movement of payments, not determine their value.
The AfCFTA, which entered into force in 2019, brings together 55 African Union member states in a market of approximately 1.4 billion people with a combined GDP of around $3.4 trillion. The digital corridor represents one of the more concrete infrastructure plays under the agreement, which has faced persistent questions about implementation pace since its launch.
The joint venture between the AfCFTA Secretariat and Quest Ghana will design, develop, and operate the corridor. Beyond that arrangement, the parties have not disclosed an ownership structure, a financing plan, or a timetable for full rollout — details that investors and trade operators will be watching closely as the project moves from agreement to execution.
For businesses operating across African borders — particularly those in minerals and commodities — the exchange and payment system, if delivered at scale, could meaningfully reduce the friction that has long kept intra-African trade well below its potential relative to the continent’s economic size.
