Former AU official: Africa must integrate quickly to seize China’s market opening

NAIROBI — Erastus Mwencha, former deputy chairperson of the African Union Commission and member of the Advisory Council of the Belt and Road Forum, told Xinhua that African countries should combine into a single market and move fast to take advantage of China's expanded market access.

Mwencha frames the issue plainly. Decades after the Organization of African Unity was founded, he calls the continent's economic fragmentation "unfinished business." He describes colonial-era boundaries as having left "pseudo-economies" that are too small in population to pursue industrial strategies that work at scale. Bringing populations and markets together, he says, is the most practical way forward.

What changed in Beijing is concrete. China introduced zero-tariff treatment covering all tariff lines for the 53 African countries that have diplomatic relations with it, effective Dec. 1, 2025. For Mwencha that is an opportunity that should be seized quickly: China is a market of more than 1.4 billion people and a GDP quoted in the interview as over 140 trillion yuan.

The continent faces a narrowing window, he argues, because global trade governance is under strain. Mwencha points to rising protectionism and what he calls a leadership deficit in multilateral trade. He notes that countries involved in building the original GATT and WTO have shifted toward unilateral measures and sanctions, reducing the predictability of global trade rules.

That global uncertainty increases the relative value of large regional markets and practical partnerships. Mwencha says a united African market would enable the continent to pursue development paths similar to those of China, India, and Brazil — economies that used scale to expand manufacturing and domestic consumption.

Mwencha also addresses the political narrative around China-Africa engagement. He recalls the Tanzania-Zambia Railway (TAZARA) built in the 1970s as an example of long-term cooperation. At the time China was itself poor, he says, yet it committed to a major infrastructure project. He uses that history to push back on portrayals that frame China simply as a resource grabber, urging African countries to engage "hand in hand for a future of shared prosperity."

The policy implications are practical. Trade preferences alone won't generate results if exporters cannot meet standards, scale production, or access finance and logistics. Mwencha's call to action therefore implies preconditions: harmonized trade rules and standards across Africa, investments in production and value addition, and coordinated trade promotion that leverages China's duty-free offer rather than letting fragmented national efforts compete at a disadvantage.

The interview does not provide a blueprint for those steps, but it makes a clear strategic case: given deteriorating multilateral predictability and a sizable preferential market opening in China, African countries should accelerate integration to increase bargaining power, expand industrial policy options, and move goods up value chains. The time-sensitive nature of the opportunity is the central message.

Whether Africa will move quickly enough to capture that chance depends on political will, institutional follow-through within bodies like the African Union, and concrete measures to knit national markets together into a functional continental market.