The creation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is certainly a remarkable fact in international relations. Created by an agreement of 21 March 2018, this company entered its operational phase on 1 January 2021, and the speed with which the treaty was ratified (54 ratifications in 2022, Eritrea being the only state not to have joined the process) undoubtedly testifies to the enthusiasm that this project arouses. The stakes are indeed immense: relating to a market of nearly a billion human beings, extending its tentacles over an entire continent, the AfCFTA should stimulate intra-African trade – this Achilles heel of continental economic development – by nearly 53%.

Institutional support for the removal of tariff and non-tariff barriers, as well as the liberalization of trade in services – which is what the AfCFTA essentially consists of – is another reason to take an interest in this process. In fact, two Protocols to the initial treaty have been concluded, on the one hand on the freedom of movement of persons, the right of residence and the right of establishment, adopted in 2018, and on investment, officially entitled: “Protocol on Investments to the Agreement Establishing the African Continental Free Trade Area”, and adopted in October 2022 in Libreville (Gabon).

The African Society of Community Law (SADC), which was launched a few months ago, therefore had a natural vocation to organize a symposium on African integration in the era of the AfCFTA. A project as systematic and ambitious as that of this Free Trade Area, with its profound economic and social repercussions, calls for reflection on the part of jurists, the swinger bias being also a bet on the law, both through the proliferation of norms that are imposed on States and from the point of view of the establishment of dispute settlement mechanisms. refined and sophisticated mechanisms, certainly inspired by those used in the WTO.

The subject of the symposium remains however focused on the articulation of the AfCFTA project with the existing one. Although the scope of the project is in many respects a novelty, development through economic integration was an option taken in the aftermath of independence. The question then is to what extent the free trade area project that is being rolled out before our eyes remains compatible with the options of principle adopted by the States for a long time, to what extent – to put it another way – the new accommodates the old.

The first issue is that of the compatibility of the AfCFTA with the other major continental project that pre-exists it, which is that of the “African Economic Community” established by the Abuja Treaty of 1991, and which aims at the creation of a continental common market. The question is certainly not hidden because the 2018 treaty creating the AfCFTA states a compatibility in principle of the two approaches, but this conciliatory, purely theoretical approach could well leave us thinking or doubtful.

A second subject of questioning is the relationship that the Free Trade Area has with sub- regional integrations, embodied by Regional Economic Communities (RECs), of which there are eight (08). Here too, the triad of treaties adopted for the implementation of the Free Trade Area establishes the principle of a kind of continuity and coherence between the two levels of integration, erasing the rough edges between the AfCFTA and the RECs, so to speak. The questioning is more justified insofar as it leads to certain concerns in the light of the phenomenon of rationalization of the RECs, encouraged by the African Union. As an illustration, there is the project to rationalize CEMAC and ECCAS into a single Community, the work of which at the6th Meeting of the Dedicated Steering Committee took place in Yaoundé on June 6 and 7, 2024. In the same vein, since July 25, 2024, the agreement creating a Tripartite Free Trade Area (FTTA) between the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the East African Community (EAC) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) entered into force with the deposit of the instrument of ratification of the Republic of Angola. It should be noted that this is a combination of 29 member states, more than half of those making up the African continent.

However, it is a question of going beyond soothing proclamations of principle and considering, concretely and objectively, the scope of the African Free Trade Area project, the upheavals that such a project implies, or the questions that revolve around the articulation between the AfCFTA and the African common market project on the one hand, and between the Free Trade Area and the sub-regional integrations embodied by the “Regional Economic Communities” on the other part.

The perspective of the conference is therefore deliberately “problematizing”. The aim is to encourage critical reflection in the face of the changes that are coming, to question the developments brought about by the current economic situation and, possibly, to propose ways to avoid the pitfalls that could arise from the implementation of the Free Trade Area.

The participants in the colloquium will therefore be mainly jurists – possibly, political scientists specializing in the study of international relations – who are interested in international law in general and the law of regional integration in particular. It is not excluded, on a subject such as this, that the conference could open up to the strictly economic perspective, and hear at least one specialist in this field, as it is true that the dynamics of this subject can determine the institutional choices made by States.