African nations should harmonise regulatory necessities, join cost programs and spend money on shared monetary infrastructure to make cross-border trade quicker and cheaper, consultants said on the 2026 Moonshot by TechCabal conference.
Speaking on a panel titled, “Commerce Without Borders: Cross-Border Without Friction”, Tola Onayemi, chief govt officer (CEO) of Norebase; Tatiana Ndlovu, govt head of promoting at Nedbank Africa Regions; and Iheakachi Nwabueze, vice-president of world advertising and marketing and progress at Grey, stated fragmented laws and disconnected cost programs proceed to boost the price and complexity of doing enterprise throughout the continent.
Cross-border trade between African nations reached $220.3 billion in 2024, rising 12.4% from the earlier yr, in keeping with Afreximbank’s African Trade Report 2025.
Yet companies buying and selling throughout the continent proceed to navigate completely different currencies, cost programs and regulatory necessities, which might make transactions costlier and sophisticated.
The audio system stated higher interoperability and fewer regulatory duplication would assist companies attain extra prospects throughout borders.
Onayemi stated cost programs throughout Africa had been largely designed round particular person nations slightly than a linked continental market, creating a pointy distinction between home transactions and cross-border funds.
Using Nigeria for instance, he stated home transfers may very well be accomplished inside seconds, however that effectivity usually broke down when transactions crossed nationwide boundaries.
“Once you start to move that from outside one jurisdiction to the other, that interoperability breaks apart,” he stated.
He argued that connecting present cost infrastructure, slightly than repeatedly constructing separate programs, might assist scale back the price of transferring cash throughout the continent.
“If we own that layer, what it means is that we’re able to set a lot more of the pricing and the cost,” Onayemi stated.
He referred to as for a shared infrastructure that will allow monetary establishments and cost suppliers to attach their providers whereas persevering with to serve their prospects.
He cited Nigeria’s home cost infrastructure for instance of how suppliers might provide providers by a typical underlying system as an alternative of independently recreating the identical capabilities.
Such an strategy, he stated, might scale back duplication and assist decrease the price of cross-border transactions.
Onayemi additionally recognized regulatory fragmentation as a barrier to growth.
He defined {that a} monetary expertise firm in search of to function in Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana may wish separate licences and funds held domestically in every market to facilitate funds.
The requirement to keep up funds in a number of nations, he stated, provides to the complexity of settling transactions and reconciling balances.
He stated fragmented company and administrative necessities make it tougher for companies to increase throughout African markets.
For retailers, the problem extends past accepting funds to receiving funds, settling transactions and arranging the logistics wanted to ship items throughout borders.
Ndlovu believes the options should additionally account for purchasers’ expectations, arguing that individuals ought to have the identical confidence when shopping for items and providers throughout borders as they do of their home markets.
Customers must know the worth of a product, whether or not a provider could be trusted, when an order will arrive and what recourse is out there if a transaction goes incorrect, she stated.
“The reality is that the same empathy design principles that you apply on local products, you should absolutely be able to apply cross border,” Ndlovu stated.
