We say no to AfCFTA – trade justice for people, not corporations!
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- Statement by African civil society groups
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As civil society groups across Africa, trade unions, farmers’ associations, local communities, and environmental, feminist, and youth movements, we raise our voices in collective opposition to the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). While marketed as a path to prosperity, the AfCFTA threatens the livelihoods of ordinary people. It risks dismantling informal and community-based economies that sustain millions, while empowering transnational corporations and elites. Women, who make up the majority of informal traders and smallholder food producers, stand to lose the most, as local markets are overrun, dumping practices take place, essential services are privatised, and land and seed sovereignty are undermined.
Since the early 2000s, Africans have resisted Economic Partnership Agreements pushed by the European Union (EU) to extend colonial patterns of exploitation. Today, the AfCFTA emerges as another neoliberal project: a mega trade deal driven by the African Union (AU) and backed by powerful global actors including the United States, the EU, China, the African Development Bank, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organisation (WTO). It aims to liberalise 97% of trade in goods, and to set rules for services, investment, electronic commerce, and intellectual property and more, without meaningful consultation of the people it will affect.
Despite being signed by 54 of 55 AU member states and entering into force in 2019, the AfCFTA’s implementation has been limited and opaque. The negotiation processes have lacked transparency, with critical information only surfacing through leaked documents. This remains a major area of concern.
We reject the AfCFTA because it means:
1. A threat to African food sovereignty
The AfCFTA advances an agribusiness agenda that undermines small-scale farmers and peasant agriculture—particularly by enabling the criminalisation of farmers’ seeds. The multiple layers of seed legislation that extend from national, regional and continental levels do not only target farmers’ seeds, they threaten Africa’s food sovereignty. The intellectual property protocol and some of its draft annexes promote harmonised laws that would privatise traditional seeds, enabling transnational seed companies to monopolise genetic resources and limit farmers from saving or exchanging seeds. This will threaten biodiversity and traditional heritage, and further entrench corporate control over African food systems. Agroecological practices developed by peasant communities in direct response to climate change and the food crisis will be more difficult to implement.
2. Erosion of workers’ rights
The agreement supports the expansion of Special Economic Zones (SEZs), which often operate under relaxed labour, tax, and environmental regulations to attract foreign investors. In practice, SEZs have meant exploitative working conditions, low wages, anti-union policies, poor sanitation, and gender-based violence. They also result in land grabs and the displacement of rural communities.
3. Reduced access to affordable medicines
The AfCFTA’s intellectual property provisions could restrict the production and import of affordable generic medicines. With negotiations on patent rules still ongoing and largely inaccessible to the public, the risk to public health remains severe, particularly for communities already struggling with access to basic healthcare.
4. Privatised justice for corporations: ISDS mechanism
Under the AfCFTA, member states may be required to set up an Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism, which would allow corporations to sue African governments in international arbitration tribunals if public policies or regulations affected their expected profits, even if such policies protect health, enviroment or human rights. Such mechanisms are biased in favour of corporations and do not give room for countries to sue foreign investors. They are anti-democratic and undermine national sovereignty, potentially binding countries to substantial financial penalties that are akin to debt.
5. Debt-driven infrastructure for corporate gain
The AfCFTA is one of the AU’s Agenda 2063’s signature projects, promoting massive infrastructure projects such as the Nacala and Lobito Corridors. Often designed to serve the interests of multinational corporations, these mega-projects generate unsustainable debt and rarely benefit the communities affected by their construction. These international loans will only add to the already alarming public debt of African countries. Sustained austerity policies, privatisation of public services, land grabbing and other neoliberal conditions will increasingly strangle populations.
6. Digital colonialism in the name of trade
The AfCFTA’s digital trade protocol promotes a continental digital single market that prioritises deregulation over digital rights. It threatens national data protection laws and undermines digital sovereignty by banning data localisation measures. Given that only one third of Africans regularly access the internet, this protocol primarily benefits tech transnationals, promotes digital colonialism and economic dependence.
7. The worsening ecological crisis in Africa
The AfCFTA could exacerbate the ecological crisis by accelerating the exploitation of resources (such as minerals, oil and timber) by multinationals and large local businesses, while increasing pollution and CO₂ emissions through intensive agriculture, polluting industries and transport dependent on fossil fuels. Importing cheap products, including electronic waste, would further damage the environment.
8. Promote land grabbing
Land is central to the economic, social and cultural life of every country in Africa. AfCFTA protocol on investment sets out standards that every member state must implement to protect investors. It specifically mentions land rights of local communities. Since the agreement could lead to an increase in demand for land from agricultural and other investors, and since climate policies look to land projects to capture carbon, the risk to local communities that depend on land will rise.
Another false promise of development
The AfCFTA is not a people’s tool. It fails to disrupt the status quo and promote a socially just trade architecture at the service of people and planet and not profit. It thus entrenches inequality, undermines local economies, and sacrifices African sovereignty to serve the interests of foreign and domestic elites. In fact, it is a continuation of the same corporate-driven trade policies long criticised under the WTO and bilateral free trade agreements. It exacerbates financial dependence by establishing public-private partnerships that deplete national budgets.
We call on African governments to halt the implementation of the AfCFTA.
We, civil society groups across Africa, trade unions, farmers’ associations, local communities, and environmental, feminist, and youth movements must take immediate action through:
• Popular consultations in every region;
• Vigilance committees to monitor impacts;
• Alternative forums proposing sovereign economic models;
• Massive, eye-catching media campaigns;
• Ongoing awareness-raising via popular education.
Our unity is worth more than their profits! Let us build a fairer Africa together:
• Fair in the distribution of wealth
• Equitable in its trade
• Respectful of human and nature rights
• Serving the essential needs of its peoples and ecosystems
• Based on solidarity rather than exploitation!
We say NO to AfCFTA!
Signatories
- AFAP
- Alliance for the affected communities on land development in Uganda (AACOLD)
- Association Tunisienne de Permaculture
- ATTAC CADTM Burkina
- ATTAC CADTM Maroc
- ATTAC Togo
- CADTM Africa
- CADTM Lubumbashi
- CEFROHT Uganda
- Community initiatives for Transformation Africa (CITA)
- Convergence global des luttes terre et eau ouest Afrique (CGLTE-OA)
- GRAIN
- Jeunes Volontaires pour l’Environnement Cote d’Ivoire
- Jeunes Volontaires pour l’Environnement Gabon
- Jeunes Volontaires pour l’Environnement Togo
- JINUKUN NETWORK - Réseau National pour une Gestion Durable des Ressources Génétiques au Bénin
- Kenyan Peasants League
- La Via Campesina South East Africa (LVC SEAF)
- Muyissi Environnement
- National Alliance for Agroecology the Gambia (NAAG)
- North African Network for Food Sovereignty (SIYADA)
- PAPEL Association
- RADD
- REFEB CI
- Réseau des organisations des jeunes engagés dans le changement climatique, conservation de la biodiversité, zones humides et forêts
- Seed Savers Network
- SYNAPARCAM
- Witness Radio
- Women’s Network Against Rural Plantations Injustice (WoNARPI)
