What holds a continent together when its politics pulls apart? Africa has signed the treaty for a single market of 1.4 billion people. But treaties do not trade. People do. And people trade with those they can reach and those they trust.
That is the real test facing the African Continental Free Trade Area. Its success depends on stable corridors between the continent’s anchor economies, and the most significant of them, between Nigeria and South Africa, has also been the most politically sensitive. Tensions this year drew diplomatic engagement at the ECOWAS and African Union levels, a familiar pattern after similar strains in 2008, 2015 and 2019. Elsewhere, border closures and trade disagreements have shown how quickly politics can slow the movement of goods and people.
Yet beneath the diplomatic weather, a set of private and institutional initiatives is building the integration that summits alone cannot deliver.
The numbers tell part of the story. Bilateral trade between Nigeria and South Africa reached $2.16 billion in early 2026, and non-oil exports grew by over 14 percent year on year, driven by financial services, telecommunications and creative media. These flows were not created by political goodwill, and they have not disappeared in its absence.
Much of that resilience is being built deliberately. In August, the Nigeria-South Africa Chamber of Commerce convened more than 300 senior executives under the theme ‘Building Local Content Together: 25 Years of Shared Growth.’ The panel featured founders of Nigerian firms such as CWG, BlackHouse Media and Seams and Stitches, each of which scaled into a continental enterprise through cross-border partnerships. Modupe Kadri, Chief Financial Officer of MTN Nigeria, captured the thinking: ‘Shared growth is not charity; it is not public relations. It is business logic.’
That logic extends to how Africans see one another. The Media Innovation Programme, a journalism fellowship run by the telecom operator with Pan-Atlantic University, has produced five cohorts, each with a South Africa component built in. This year’s 25 journalists, chosen from more than 4,500 applicants, joined a summit at the University of Johannesburg in early September on media and social cohesion, with a spotlight on Nigeria-South Africa relations.
Why does a journalism fellowship matter to trade? Because perception shapes markets. Professor Sifiso Mnisi of the University of Johannesburg noted that Nigerians and South Africans often form impressions of each other through news, social media and popular culture rather than direct contact. The fellows came away calling for joint investigations and editorial partnerships across African newsrooms, and the model has since gone continental, with a Pan-African edition welcoming 42 journalists and editors from 10 countries.
But a single market cannot run on goodwill alone. It needs connectivity, and the same group is laying foundations here too. It is an owner of the 2Africa subsea cable, a system of over 45,000 kilometres with 180 Tbps of capacity, the highest of any cable serving the continent. Through its infrastructure arm, Bayobab, it manages subsea and terrestrial wholesale capacity, and expects that subsea capacity to double heading into 2030. Every trader who closes a deal by phone, every payment that crosses a border digitally, rides on networks like these.
Physical connectivity matters just as much, and aviation shows the size of the task. At the ACI Africa Regional Conference in Abuja this week, the President of ACI Africa said the continent’s aviation sector requires about $32 billion in investment over the next ten years to close its gap, even as African aviation has grown three times faster than the sector elsewhere in the world. The demand is clearly there. A gap of that size will not be filled by governments alone. It will take private investors, cross-border operators and patient capital to build the routes, terminals and cargo links a single market needs.
Tourism is receiving the same attention. On 2 September, South Africa Tourism Connect brought tourism authorities, South African Airways, the Nigeria-South Africa Chamber of Commerce and trade bodies together at Heritage Place in Lagos, committing jointly to reposition the corridor for leisure, business, cultural and family travel.
Pan-African finance is reinforcing the effort. In May, the AfCFTA Secretariat and Ecobank Group signed an agreement linking the Secretariat’s mandate to Ecobank’s continental network and its $3 billion trade finance commitment, with a focus on small businesses, women-led enterprises and young entrepreneurs. And in September, the Secretariat signed an agreement to develop a $5.17 billion Digital Trade Corridor targeting the fragmented payment and logistics systems that still make it cheaper for some African businesses to trade with Europe than with their neighbours.
Put together, these efforts point to a shift in how African integration happens. Governments set the framework, and the ECOWAS compact signed in Freetown commits member states to rebuilding trust between citizens and public institutions. But the daily work of integration is increasingly done by companies, chambers, universities, newsrooms, networks and airlines that have found practical reasons to keep working together.
That is the quiet power of these initiatives. They do not wait for the next summit. They build relationships and infrastructure that continue regardless of the headlines.
The question for Africa is no longer whether its trade future can survive political tension. It is whether enough bridges, in the air, over the wires and between people, can be built beneath the politics to carry the continent forward. On the evidence so far, the builders are already at work.