The trade dispute involving South Africa, Tanzania and Malawi serves as a strong early warning sign that Africa needs robust dispute resolution mechanisms guided by the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) rules, if the bloc is to survive past the initial euphoria that catapulted it into existence.
All the three countries are signatories to the AfCFTA. South Africa and Tanzania are currently trading under the Guided Trade Initiative – a pilot programme under the AfCFTA, designed to test the operational, legal and institutional readiness of the free trade framework.
The initiative also enables meaningful cross-border trade, and demonstrates to African businesses that the AfCFTA can deliver real economic opportunities.
With the present trade dispute, Africa is still quite far from being operationally, legally and institutionally ready to fully operate in a continental free trade framework. What’s even more concerning about this latest development is that various groups have warned that the death knell of AfCFTA will be non-tariff barriers presented under the guise of economic protection for markets.
Today, the dispute involving the Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries reflects this very warning.
However, it is also an opportunity to evaluate what needs to be introduced and adopted to strengthen the resolution of trading rows and effectively implement AfCFTA. This is particularly important as the current geopolitical landscape adds tension and uncertainty for fledgling economies like Malawi.
This isn’t an isolated event. Between 2023 and 2025, several similar trade hiccups have occurred across the continent. For instance, Kenya blocked Ugandan milk and sugar, Nigeria imposed import bans that hurt regional markets, Zimbabwe imposed quotas on South African poultry, and Botswana restricted livestock movement from Namibia.
These disputes, often politically driven and framed as consumer protection or local industry promotion, expose the fragility of regional trade relationships and the gaps in enforcement mechanisms.
The consequences are far-reaching. For Malawi, reliance on Tanzania’s port infrastructure for both exports and imports means sudden border restrictions come at a steep price—both financially and diplomatically. For Tanzania, which had seen its exports to Malawi triple in five years, this is a blow to regional trade momentum and credibility.
For South Africa, the disruption of fruit exports and mounting tensions further weaken investor confidence at a time when global protectionism, including the return of Trump-era tariffs, is already narrowing market access for African producers.
What these disputes reveal is a critical flaw in AfCFTA’s current trajectory: the absence of a reliable, binding dispute resolution framework and enforcement system. The agreement’s on-Tariff Barriers (NTB) Annex, while promising on paper, has yet to fully prove its efficacy.
It mandates the identification, categorisation and elimination of non-tariff barriers and calls for a formal mechanism to mediate them. But as this case shows, the gap between commitment and implementation remains wide.
The trade fallout between Malawi, Tanzania, and South Africa is a microcosm of a continent-wide economic challenge.
UNCTAD reports estimates that Africa loses up to $20 billion in potential Gross Domestic Product growth due to non-tariff barriers like those at the heart of this standoff.
This is not a theoretical figure: it reflects the real costs of spoilt goods at borders, disrupted supply chains, and re-routed trade flows that inflate prices and stifle investment. The current quarrel illustrates how quickly protectionist policies can undermine the promise of AfCFTA, especially when countries resort to unilateral actions without recourse to coordinated resolution.
To safeguard the AfCFTA’s future, three urgent steps must be taken:
Firstly, the AfCFTA Secretariat must act quickly. With support from African Union Commission and relevant Regional Economic Blocs (RECs), the secretariat should finalise and operationalise the Dispute Settlement Body envisioned (DSB) in the AfCFTA Agreement. To be effective, this DSB will need to have authority to make binding decision – else we risk another toothless regional body.
Secondly, SADC, EAC, Ecowas and other RECs should develop rapid-response NTB taskforces that work in real time with the AfCFTA Secretariat’s NTB online tool.
These bodies must be trained to identify politically driven trade blockages and mediate before escalation occurs.
While the AfCFTA’s NTB online mechanism provides a vital tool for reporting and tracking trade blockages, its effectiveness depends on political will, follow-through, and institutional cooperation. What’s needed now is not just more data, but greater enforceability, independent oversight and regional accountability.
This includes fast-tracked escalation protocols for politically sensitive disputes and the empowerment of independent trade observatories to flag and follow up on recurring barriers. In doing so, we can better protect small traders and informal economies that are often first—and hardest—hit when disputes erupt.
This moment, while concerning, is not the death knell of the AfCFTA. It is a stress test—and a chance to reinforce the institutional backbone of what remains Africa’s most ambitious economic experiment. Considering the current global trade landscape, member states of the AfCFTA will need to be serious about building a future where African goods, services, and people move freely and fairly.
To do this, stronger enforcement of dispute resolutions mechanisms will be critical. The Tanzania-South Africa-Malawi dispute should serve as a catalyst for reform, not a symptom of the AfCFTA’s decline.
Rutendo Nyaku is the Global Head of Research & Thought Leadership at ALN Kenya and the Rule of Law Advisor at ALN Academy
