In an era where digital communication underpins trade, investment, and economic cooperation, it remains a paradox that communicating with a neighbouring African country often costs more than calling destinations thousands of kilometres away.
For businesses and individuals across the continent, this reality represents not merely an inconvenience, but a structural barrier to Africa’s economic integration.
As Africa pursues deeper continental integration through the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), affordable and seamless communication must be recognised as a foundational component of trade infrastructure.
Without deliberate action to reduce intra-African communication costs, the promise of AfCFTA risks being undermined at the very level where trade relationships are initiated and sustained—communication.
Communication costs and the AfCFTA vision
The AfCFTA, officially launched in 2021, seeks to create the world’s largest single market by connecting 54 African economies, promoting the free movement of goods, services, capital, and people (African Union, 2021).
While progress has been made in tariff liberalisation and trade facilitation frameworks, less attention has been paid to the cost of communication that enables cross-border transactions, negotiations, and service delivery.
For small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), traders, service providers, and digital entrepreneurs, frequent communication is essential. Yet in many African countries, international call tariffs and data costs to neighbouring states remain disproportionately high.
In West Africa, for example, users in some countries pay significantly more per minute to call within the region than to communicate with Europe or North America, despite geographic proximity and shared regional institutions (ECOWAS SIGTEL, 2023).
The Economic cost of expensive connectivity
High intra-African communication costs have direct and indirect consequences for trade and integration. They increase transaction costs for businesses, discourage regular cross-border engagement, and limit opportunities for collaboration among entrepreneurs, particularly SMEs that operate with thin margins.
For informal and semi-formal traders—who account for a significant share of intra-African trade—the burden is even greater.
Beyond commerce, expensive communication weakens professional networks, disrupts regional value chains, and constrains the growth of digital services such as e-commerce, fintech, logistics coordination, and cross-border professional services.
In effect, Africa’s markets remain digitally fragmented, even as policy frameworks push for physical and regulatory integration.
Lessons from other regions
Other regions offer clear evidence that communication cost harmonisation supports integration. Within the European Union, regulatory coordination has significantly reduced or eliminated roaming and cross-border call charges, enabling seamless communication across member states (European Commission, 2022).
This approach treats communication as a public economic good—essential to trade, mobility, and regional cohesion.
Asia has similarly pursued regional frameworks to reduce telecom costs and improve interoperability, recognising that digital connectivity is integral to competitiveness in a globalised economy.
Some root causes of high intra-African communication costs include legacy interconnection and settlement charges between national operators, fragmented regulatory regimes with limited regional enforcement mechanisms, inadequate cross-border fibre and shared infrastructure and limited competition in some national telecom markets.
According to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and GSMA, while Africa has made progress in mobile penetration, regional interoperability and cost harmonisation remain weak compared to global benchmarks (ITU, 2023; GSMA, 2024).
A Clear call to action
If AfCFTA is to deliver inclusive growth and meaningful integration, communication policy must move to the centre of trade strategy.
Governments must recognise affordable intra-African communication as an economic and trade priority, not solely a technical ICT issue.
Ministries responsible for Communications, Trade, and Regional Integration must work collaboratively to align telecom policy with AfCFTA objectives.
Regulators and regional bodies, including National Communications Authorities, ECOWAS, the African Telecommunications Union, and the African Union, must accelerate tariff harmonisation, enforce fair interconnection regimes, and move beyond voluntary guidelines toward binding regional frameworks.
Telecommunication operators must equally play their part by designing transparent, affordable intra-African bundles and investing in shared cross-border infrastructure.
Lower tariffs, increased call volumes, and expanded regional markets offer long-term commercial benefits that align with continental development and sustainability goals.
Way forward
Africa cannot fully integrate economically while its neighbours remain digitally distant. Reduced communication costs are not a peripheral concern; they are central to trade competitiveness, social cohesion, sustainability, and continental resilience.
The success of AfCFTA depends not only on signed agreements and policy declarations, but on practical conditions that allow Africans to communicate, negotiate, and collaborate with ease. The technology exists, the institutions exist, and the economic rationale is clear.
What is now required is decisive leadership from governments, regulators, and industry players to ensure that Africa’s single market is not only a legal construct, but a connected and functional reality.
Writer: Mark Kojo Medegli
Marketing/ Business Devt Professional | UPG Swittzerland Certified Sustainability Leader | Social Advocate
Email: mmedegli@gmail.com | Contact: +233 247 919 783
