AmCham Business Bridge: The missing links in Africa’s trade ambition

Ask any Ghanaian business executive about trade within the African continent, and you will hear a familiar refrain: it is often cheaper and easier to source from Europe, Asia, or the Americas than from a neighbouring country. This is not a matter of preference. It is a structural failure, one that persists despite the promise of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and decades of rhetoric on regional integration.

The promise of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is compelling: a single market of over 1.4 billion people, increased regional trade, and stronger economic integration. Yet for many businesses operating across West Africa, the reality remains far removed from the vision. High logistics costs, expensive air travel, fragmented customs systems, and infrastructure bottlenecks continue to undermine intra-African trade and competitiveness.

A recent meeting of AmCham Ghana’s Health, Hospitality, and Logistics Sector Committee laid bare the scale of this challenge. The discussions ranged across aviation tariffs, customs inefficiencies, transshipment gaps, and hospitality infrastructure. Still, the thread connecting every concern was the same: the cost of moving people and goods within Africa remains prohibitively high, and it is quietly suffocating business growth.

Aviation: Priced out of our own backyard

Intra-African air travel is among the most expensive in the world relative to distance. A return flight from Accra to Dakar can cost upwards of $1200, a route that could be of just under two hours. Members noted that flying to Europe or Dubai can sometimes cost less, a damning indicator of how poorly integrated our regional aviation market remains.

Part of the problem is structural: bilateral air services agreements across West Africa remain restrictive, limiting the traffic rights available to carriers and suppressing the competition that would ordinarily drive fares down. Ghana, for instance, has been unable to secure fifth freedom rights with Togo for certain routes, despite regular flights in that direction. Without competitive access, airline capacity remains constrained, and fares remain elevated.

Compounding this is the tax burden on tickets. Ghana’s aviation levies, including a recently implemented infrastructure tax, now add close to $90 in charges to a single itinerary. When stacked against airline fares and airport fees, the all-in cost of travel prices out leisure tourists, diaspora visitors, and business travellers alike. The irony is stark: Ghana has invested significantly in marketing itself internationally, yet affordability could remain a critical barrier to converting interest into arrivals.

Logistics: A fragmented landscape with a heavy price tag

The challenges in aviation are mirrored and amplified in surface logistics. Committee members recounted shipping goods from Nigeria to Ghana costing twice as much as sourcing equivalent products from Argentina.

Equipment moved across West Africa, from Ghana to Mali or Liberia, triggers duty assessments at each country of transit, making regional supply chains economically irrational. Event equipment sent to Togo is treated as a permanent import. Goods temporarily leaving Ghana for repair and return face re-importation duties that exceed the cost of replacement.

Customs valuation remains a persistent flashpoint. The use of AI-generated valuation systems that frequently override commercial invoices with inflated reference prices has created an environment of uncertainty.

Businesses report spending weeks clearing shipments that should take days, with little recourse against discretionary assessments. The absence of a designated point of contact at the Ghana Revenue Authority for trade dispute resolution, a specific gap raised by members, means that issues escalate rather than resolve.

The strategic opportunity ghana is missing

Ghana is well-positioned geographically to serve as a regional transshipment and logistics hub. That potential, however, is being eroded by the absence of effective customs coordination with neighbouring countries, which discourages international shippers from routing cargo through Tema.

Where Singapore, Dubai, and Casablanca have built multimodal logistics ecosystems on the back of predictable, low-friction trade environments, West Africa’s fragmented regulatory landscape continues to send the opposite signal to investors.

The solutions are well understood, harmonised regional customs procedures, simplified transit documentation, liberalised bilateral air service agreements, and transparent, rule-based tariff administration. What is needed is sustained political will and coordinated private sector advocacy to move these from policy documents into practice.

Africa cannot achieve meaningful economic integration if businesses continue to face excessive costs moving people, products, and equipment across borders. The success of AfCFTA will not be measured by agreements signed, but by the ease with which an entrepreneur in Accra can trade with customers in Lagos, Dakar, Abidjan, or Nairobi.

Reducing the cost of connectivity, whether by road, sea, air, or border processes, is no longer simply a logistics issue. It is a strategic imperative for Africa’s growth, competitiveness, and shared prosperity.

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