Fact Check: Is the AfCFTA the World's Second Biggest Free Trade Area?

The AfCFTA is planned to cover almost all of Africa, but doesn't yet.

The recently-created African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) now has 28 full member countries, with 26 more signed on to the project as future members.

That's a lot of members for a free trade area, and everyone seems to be calling it the "world's biggest free trade area since the WTO". But is that label really accurate?

(If you don't want to read the whole article, scroll down to the conclusion for a short summary.)

Mauritius Becomes Full Member of AfCFTA (Map)

Update: As far as can be determined, this map is still accurate as of August 2020, with no news on any deposits of ratification instruments since Mauritius. Angola, Cameroon, and Morocco are all reported to have ratified the AfCFTA treaty, but apparently haven't yet completed their membership by registering with African Union headquarters (the AU's official "status list" for the treaty hasn't been updated since October 2019, and recent reports still put the number of deposits at 28). 

In related news, the next stage of the trade area's implementation has been delayed to January 2021, but the organization's headquarters were inaugurated on August 17, 2020 in Accra, Ghana.

Map by Evan Centanni, from blank map by Eric Gaba. License: CC BY-SA

Mauritius Ratifies AfCFTA Treaty

Two months ago, we reported on this year's creation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), an African Union (AU) project to increase trade within Africa. Almost all of Africa's countries have signed on to the AfCFTA, but they only become full members once they've ratified its founding treaty (adopted it into their national laws) and formally registered their ratification with the AU.

Map: What is the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA)?

There are newer versions of this map available. To see them, view all AfCFTA updates.

Map by Evan Centanni, from blank map by Eric Gaba. License: CC BY-SA

New Trade Bloc: What is the AfCFTA Agreement?

Despite being neighbors, most countries in Africa trade more with other continents than with each other - a peculiar leftover of colonialism that the African Union (AU) has long been looking to change. Last year, the organization's member countries finally came together and agreed on the creation of one of the world's most expansive "free trade areas". The new zone, called the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), officially came into being on May 30, 2019, after a minimum threshold of 22 countries confirmed that they had copied its 2018 founding treaty into their national laws (a process called "ratification").