African leaders have long pledged to knit their economies, institutions and people into a unified whole. From the Lagos Plan of Action drawn up in 1980 by the then Organisation of African Unity to the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which officially commenced in 2021, the ambition has been clear: to turn a multitude of economies into one continental market. Yet, according to the AU’s African Integration Report 2025, success has been patchy.
The infrastructure and political pillars are advancing (albeit slowly) but the human and social dimensions remain weak links. As the authors put it, “the human and social integration pillar remains the least advanced area in the continental integration agenda. While the AU’s vision in Agenda 2063 places human capital at the heart of the continent’s transformation, operational progress remains slow and fragmented across regions.”
Integration without mobility
The contrast between infrastructure and human integration is striking. Many countries have modernised border posts and digitised customs systems, yet travel across Africa remains cumbersome. The Kigali Protocol on Free Movement of Persons, adopted in 2018 to complement the AfCFTA, has been ratified by only four countries — well shy of the 15 required to bring it into force. And just a handful of states offer visa-free or e-visa access to most Africans. For most travellers, crossing African borders still requires lengthy paperwork, high fees, or both.
The result is a paradox: it is often easier for goods to move across African borders than it is for Africans to travel within the continent.
The report does indicate progress at the level of regional economic communities (RECs). “Ecowas [the Economic Community of West African States] and the EAC [East African Community] stand out as the most advanced in terms of regional mobility frameworks, offering visa exemptions and rights of residence and establishment.” That’s a start.
Thinking inside the box
The report flags education as a sphere being held back by lack of integration. While the AU’s Continental Education Strategy for Africa aims to harmonise qualifications, mutual recognition agreements have advanced slowly. The result is that “cross-border student mobility remains low, and very few RECs have implemented joint curricula, regional scholarship schemes, or regional accreditation mechanisms”.
Disparities in training standards and accreditation processes affect cross-border employment. Engineers or doctors qualified in one country often face arduous recertification in another. The Addis Convention, intended to facilitate recognition of qualifications and support academic mobility, came into force in 2019 but has just 14 state parties. Such fragmentation reduces the incentives for skilled migration within Africa and limits the continent’s capacity to build regional centres of excellence.
Transnational tech
Digital connectivity offers one area of promise. Cross-border mobile money systems and regional data hubs are spreading. The AU’s Digital Transformation Strategy seeks to integrate markets through technology, potentially easing restrictions on payments, remittances and e-commerce.
Yet here, too, progress varies widely. While countries such as Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa lead in digital adoption, others remain hampered by patchy infrastructure and regulatory misalignment. Leading digital infrastructure initiatives also tend to be national in scope, lacking regional or continental co-ordination.
The report highlights the imperative to “scale up e-learning platforms, regional digital libraries, and open science initiatives [to reduce] inequalities in access to knowledge and innovation across the continent”.
In several regions, insecurity has led governments to tighten borders again after years of liberalisation
Politics and people
Political co-operation remains the continent’s most developed integration pillar. Regional organisations such as Ecowas and the Southern African Development Community continue to mediate conflicts and co-ordinate policy. But recurring instability — from Sudan to the Sahel — has disrupted free movement protocols and cross-border projects. In several regions, insecurity has led governments to tighten borders again after years of liberalisation.
Nonetheless, as the report’s top-scoring pillar, political integration could lead the way for both hard and soft connectivity to grow in mutually reinforcing ways. The correlation is visible in East Africa, where joint infrastructure, common education frameworks and regional business networks create synergies. Elsewhere, the emphasis on physical infrastructure without matching social investment has created what has been dubbed “connectivity without community”.
An unfinished union
As the report’s authors put it, there is “significant progress in institutional, infrastructure and trade-related areas [but] greater efforts are needed in the human, social, environmental and scientific spheres”.
Measured in kilometres of new road or megawatts of shared power, the progress is praiseworthy; but less so when measured in how easily an African student, doctor or artisan can work across the continent. Building with concrete is one thing, but it needs to be matched with confidence and community. Aspirational regional examples and maturing political institutions will do well to bring the human element up to speed with the hard stuff.
The Centre of African Management & Markets conducts academic and practitioner research and provides strategic insight on African markets. Macleod is a founding member
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.