South Africa is already part of regional blocs such as the Southern African Customs Union and the Southern African Development Community.
On a bigger scale, experts pointed to the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which seeks to build a single African market by scrapping most tariffs and easing customs rules. In practice, this should make it easier for goods, services and investments to move across borders, boosting trade and jobs.
“We are better together as Africans: investing in each other, trading with each other, creating value-chains with each other,” Ngundu said, referring to the networks that connect goods, services, capital and technology together across borders.
By June 2025, 54 African Union member states – all except Eritrea – had signed the agreement, and 49, including South Africa, had formally agreed to be legally bound by it, according to the University of Cape Town’s Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance.
Ramaphosa described the African trade area as “central to our economic vision”. “We are actively working with the AfCFTA secretariat to finalise value-chain protocols in automotive, agro-processing, pharmaceuticals and textiles,” he said in Japan.
He also backed harmonising “Rules of Origin” – the standards that define where a product is made – to promote African manufacturing and improve border infrastructure for faster trade. Such rules create consistency in trade agreements, cut complexity, close loopholes and streamline customs.
The World Bank projects that full AfCFTA implementation could raise the continent’s income by 7% by 2035. For South Africa, the ISS estimates the economy could be 11.6% larger by 2043, with exports up $85.2 billion (42.8%). This includes a $35.6 billion (28%) boost to manufacturing and $1.2 billion (11.5%) for agriculture.
Essentially, South Africa hopes to position itself as a key anchor in the continent’s 1.4 billion people-strong market.
But the impact may not be uniform. “On the one hand, each country on the continent has different levels of economic development, buying power and production capabilities, and so the reduction in trade barriers should lower the prices of goods for consumers,” Muller said.
But on the other hand, producers in some countries could find themselves uncompetitive and decline significantly.
“The last 30 years of experience with the lowering of global trade barriers under the WTO has shown that there are winners and losers from trade, and the consequences depend a lot on the specific context, industries and even products,” he said, adding that it was still too early to know how the free trade area would unfold.
In detailed analysis, the ISS said the biggest barriers to regional trade in Africa were often political, and required strong domestic buy-in.
Even with political will to overcome the short-term pain, the thinktank said that the biggest structural challenge to the AfCFTA’s implementation would be integrating vastly unequal partners, such as middle-income South Africa or Botswana with low-income neighbours, such as Mozambique, Eswatini and Lesotho.