Foreword: The Africa We Are Yet to Become

Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko, Executive Chairman, Africa Prosperity Network

At the Berlin Conference of 1884–85, European powers negotiated Africa’s partition without a single African voice in the room. They imposed fragmentation on a continent whose peoples, cultures, trade routes and histories had long been connected.

More than a century later, those borders still shape how Africans move, trade, invest and pursue opportunity. Political independence replaced foreign rule, but the larger task remains unfinished: building an Africa able to determine its own economic future.

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) has brought this ambition closer to reality by creating the framework for a continental economic space. Yet frameworks alone do not create functioning markets. Goods do not trade themselves. Agreements do not cross borders. People do.

This is the contradiction Africa must now resolve. We cannot speak credibly of a single market while Africans remain constrained in moving across their own continent. We cannot build regional value chains while transport, payment systems, visa rules and regulations continue to divide the markets we seek to unite.

The Protocol on Free Movement of Persons, Right of Residence and Right of Establishment is therefore central to Africa’s development agenda. Trade integration and human mobility are inseparable.

Africa does not lack ideas, commitments or institutions. What Africa now requires is execution.

This is the gap the Make Africa Borderless Now! movement seeks to address. It is a demand to accelerate Africa’s integration agenda and make it meaningful in the everyday lives of Africans. At its core, the movement advances one simple proposition: Africa must become a space where Africans are free to move, free to trade and free to prosper.

This conviction has shaped the work of Africa Prosperity Network through the Africa Prosperity Dialogues, which ask one central question: what will it take to make African integration real?

The answers are clear. Africa must reduce friction in the movement of people and goods, harmonise trade systems and regulations, strengthen transport and logistics connectivity, build interoperable payments and digital infrastructure, and unlock cross-border investment for SMEs, women traders, young innovators and the creative economy.

Preparations are advancing towards the Africa Prosperity Dialogues (APD) 2027 under the theme: “The Africa We Want is Borderless: Free to Move. Free to Trade. Free to Prosper.”

APD 2027 must be a moment of accountability, resolve and practical commitment. It will assess progress on AfCFTA implementation, free movement, cross-border payments, investment flows and regional infrastructure. It will also elevate the realities of citizens and businesses, whose daily experiences show whether integration is working.

The Berlin Conference drew lines on a map. It did not define the limits of African ambition. Africa now has the opportunity to complete a historic project: a continent where Africans move freely, trade freely, build freely and prosper together.