Cairo
Egypt sends roughly 50 billion dollars in goods to the world each year. Barely 8 billion of that reaches the rest of Africa. In that gap sits both an embarrassment and an opportunity and this week, Cairo moved to close it.
The Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, International Cooperation and Egyptian Expatriates, together with the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) Office for North Africa, wrapped up a three-day technical workshop in Cairo aimed at arming Egyptian companies to trade under the African Continental Free Trade Area. More than 80 participants firms, small and medium enterprises, federations, chambers, ministries and UN agencies spent the sessions learning the practical machinery of continental trade: the AfCFTA’s protocols, its rules of origin, certification procedures and the market openings they unlock.
The theme was blunt about its purpose; “Leveraging the AfCFTA for Egyptian Private Sector Expansion” and so were the officials driving it.
Counselor Mohamed Elhady, Director for Egyptian Economic Affairs and Investment Promotion at the Foreign Ministry, framed the trade area as a chance for Egyptian companies to plant themselves deeper in African markets, drawing on expertise the country has built in infrastructure and construction, energy, transport, agriculture, food processing, pharmaceuticals and engineering. The agreement, he argued, opens fresh room for Egyptian businesses to expand, export and invest across the continent.
He pointed to a national tool built for exactly this moment: HAFIZ, the Hub for Advisory, Finance and Investment for Enterprises, a ministry-run platform offering more than 90 financial and non-financial services through 40 development partners. It helps Egyptian firms find financing, access advice, reach African and international markets, and track tenders and development projects support designed to make them competitive enough to actually benefit from continental integration rather than merely talk about it.
The scale of the prize is considerable. Caitlyn Carrico, Economic Affairs Officer at the ECA Office for North Africa, noted that Egypt’s exports to the rest of Africa stood at just under 8 billion dollars last year roughly 15 per cent of its total. That figure, she suggested, is less a ceiling than a signpost, pointing to how much room remains for Egyptian exporters and for African integration more broadly. The private sector, she stressed, sits at the centre of that opportunity and holds the key to unlocking the AfCFTA’s full value.
But she attached a warning. The agreement will only deliver, she cautioned, if African businesses and especially the SMEs that form the backbone of the continent’s economies are equipped with the practical knowledge to trade under its rules. Ambition without capability, in other words, changes nothing.
The wider numbers explain the urgency. Established in 2018, the AfCFTA is now the world’s largest free trade area by membership, binding a market of about 1.4 billion people with a combined output near 3 trillion dollars. ECA research projects that full implementation could lift intra-African trade by as much as 45 per cent by 2045, pulling economies away from raw commodity exports toward higher-value goods such as processed foods, industrial products and services. And it is the private sector that must carry it: across Africa, private enterprise accounts for 80 per cent of production, 90 per cent of jobs and more than 60 per cent of investment.
That reality shaped the closing message. Santiago RodrÃguez Goicoechea, Economist at the UN Resident Coordinator’s Office in Egypt, said expanding intra-African trade can create decent jobs, lift productivity, drive industrial growth and empower women and young entrepreneurs objectives, he noted, tightly aligned with both the Sustainable Development Goals and Egypt’s own national priorities.
The tools now exist. Whether Egypt’s firms seize them is the next test.
