Gathered in Lomé on 19 May 2026 as part of Biashara Afrika 2026, African officials, economic regulators and international partners launched the inaugural AfCFTA Conference on Competition Policy and Law. At the heart of the discussions was the development of an integrated African market capable of combining free trade, economic regulation and consumer protection on a continental scale.
The inaugural AfCFTA Conference on Competition Policy and Law opened on 19 May 2026 in Lomé, Togo, around a central issue: putting competition at the service of African market integration. Held as part of Biashara Afrika 2026, the event brought together African officials, economic regulators and international partners who called for common rules capable of safeguarding the continent’s economic integration. Discussions focused on an African market of an estimated 1.4 billion people with a combined GDP of US$3.4 trillion. According to AfCFTA authorities, the gradual removal of trade barriers cannot achieve its full impact without continental regulatory mechanisms to combat cartels, abuses of dominant market positions and other distortions of competition.
The Secretary General of Africa for being with us. If we have open borders but we allow cartels to partition markets behind those open borders, if we eliminate tariff duties as we are set to do by the year 2030, we will trade at zero as the African continent but permit dominant incumbents to destroy and to crush new entrants into the market, we will not succeed. We will have an incomplete market integration agenda. What is clear that we as Africans have got to prioritise is a complementarity of policies.
Wamkele Mene, Secretary-General, AfCFTA
The Secretary-General of the AfCFTA recalled that the African Competition Protocol, initiated in 2010 and adopted in 2023, provides for the creation of a continental authority tasked with regulating a market of 1.4 billion people with an estimated GDP of US$3.4 trillion. The framework will initially focus on the transport, logistics, digital and e-commerce sectors. During the panel discussions, experts raised the prospect of establishing a Competition Tribunal and an African Competition Network to strengthen the enforcement of competition rules across the continent. In this context, Togo, host country of the inaugural conference, reaffirmed its position among the three African states most advanced in the operationalisation of the AfCFTA through the revision of its national strategy and the updating of its competition legislation.
The intensifying international competition highlights the challenges facing competition regulation and consumer welfare, and provides an opportunity to adapt our mechanisms to ensure fair competition that protects both businesses and consumers.
Badanam Patoki, Minister of Economy and Strategic Planning – Togo
At the inaugural conference, Togo affirmed its ambition to become one of Africa’s key reference hubs in building the continental common market. Beyond legal and regulatory issues, stakeholders involved in implementing the AfCFTA share a strategic vision: to build, by 2030, a more integrated and competitive African economic space, better able to support industrialisation, investment, and the transformation of the continent’s economies.
