Assessing CEMAC’s Export Composition under the AfCFTA: Opportunities and Challenges

By Larissa Ntoubia

Executive Summary

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) offers expanded market access across the continent, yet CEMAC economies are structurally positioned to gain only marginally from tariff liberalization, with estimated welfare gains of about 1.9%. The central constraint is not trade policy alone, but the region’s export structure: CEMAC economies remain heavily dependent on a narrow range of primary commodities with low value addition, limited diversification, and weak integration into regional value chains. As a result, export is relatively not responsive to tariff reductions, and demand-side gains within African markets remain limited due to low product complexity and competitiveness. The key policy implication is that tariff liberalization under AfCFTA, on its own, is insufficient to generate transformative gains for CEMAC. There is the need to shift toward export diversification, accelerated regional value chain development, and improvements in productive capacity and trade competitiveness.

Key Messages

• Commodity dependence severely limits CEMAC’s ability to convert AfCFTA tariff liberalization into meaningful export gains, due to low value addition and weak competitiveness.
• Projected export gains of about9% impliesthat tariff liberalization alone is insufficient to generate transformative trade expansion in the absence of structural economic change.
• Countries with more diversified production structures capture significantly higher AfCFTA gains, highlighting diversification as the main determinant of trade benefits.

Introduction

The African Continental Free Trade Area presents a significant opportunity for African economies to expand intra- African trade and enhance export diversification. However, the ability of the CEMAC region to capitalize on these opportunities remains limited, raising a central policy question: why does improved AfCFTA market access translate into only modest gains for CEMAC economies given their current export composition, and what does this imply for policy priorities?. CEMAC is among the least integrated regions on the continent, with intra-regional exports accounting for only about 8% of total exports and intra-regional imports representing about 6.4% of total imports. Despite its abundance of natural resources, the region has struggled to translate this potential into competitive export capacity within African markets. Export structures remain heavily concentrated in primary commodities particularly oil, minerals, and timber while diversification into higher value-added products remains limited.

Structural constraints, including weak infrastructure, limited industrial capacity, and persistent regulatory barriers, continue to restrict export competitiveness and integration into regional value chains. As a result, the expected gains from tariff liberalization under the AfCFTA remain modest, with export potential projected to increase by only up to 1.9% across the region. Notably, disparities exist across countries, with Cameroon demonstrating relatively higher export potential due to a more diversified export base, while countries such as the Central African Republic lag behind. As such, the central issue is not only market access, but the structural capacity of CEMAC economies to produce and export competitively within the continental market. This policy brief assesses the extent to which CEMAC’s export composition enables or constrains effective participation in the AfCFTA market. It examines key opportunities for expanding exports within African markets, identifies major structural challenges, and proposes policy actions to strengthen export diversification and regional integration.

Export Composition and Trade Patterns in CEMAC

Over the past decade in the CEMAC region, export structure has remained heavily concentrated in primary commodities, with crude oil, timber, and agricultural products accounting for over 75% of total export value across Cameroon, Central African Republic (CAR), Chad, Republic of the Congo (DRC), Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon. Cameroon leads with crude oil (37%), cocoa beans (18%), petroleum gas (10%), and sawn wood (7%), showing relative diversification compared to its peers. In contrast, other countries remain more narrowly specialized, with exports largely concentrated in oil, minerals, and timber, and directed mainly toward external markets, particularly Asia (about 60%) and Europe (32%). Intra- African trade remains below 5% as of 2025, underscoring AfCFTA’s untapped potential but also highlighting structural limitations. There has been no major export composition change through 2025, reinforcing the persistence of this pattern.

This export composition has important implications for diversification, resilience, and effective participation in the AfCFTA. Commodity dependence exposes member states to price volatility and limits value addition, thereby constraining the region’s ability to fully leverage the AfCFTA. Manufactured exports remain marginal, reflecting persistent structural constraints, including weak industrial capacity, limited infrastructure, and an underdeveloped private sector. While some progress has been made in agro-processing and light manufacturing, particularly in Cameroon, these efforts remain insufficient to significantly alter the region’s export profile. As a result, CEMAC’s participation in continental trade is largely as a supplier of raw materials rather than higher value goods, limiting its competitiveness and reducing opportunities for economic diversification. Under the AfCFTA, this export composition poses a strategic challenge, as increased market access alone is unlikely to yield substantial gains without efforts to upgrade production capabilities.

Opportunities under the AfCFTA

The AfCFTA presents a great opportunity for CEMAC to reposition its export structure by leveraging access to a significantly larger and more integrated African market. With reduced tariffs on a substantial share of goods, CEMAC countries stand to benefit from improved price competitiveness and expanded market reach beyond traditional external partners. This is really important given that over the years the region has been over reliant on extra-African markets for commodity exports. In the short term, the most realistic opportunities lie in trade expansion within existing or near-existing products, particularly in agro-based goods and light manufactures where some production capacity already exists, notably in Cameroon. Tariff liberalization under the AfCFTA aims to stimulate trade creation by lowering the cost of exporting within the continent, thereby granting incentives to firms to explore new regional markets.  However, past opportunities have not fully materialized due to persistent supply-side constraints, including high production costs, weak logistics, and limited firm competitiveness, which have historically reduced the ability of firms to respond to new market access. This creates a pathway for the sub region to gradually shift from commodity driven exports toward more diversified trade flows. Also, improved market access enhances the attractiveness of the region for investment, particularly in sectors where economies of scale and regional demand can support industrial growth, although such gains are more likely to materialize over the medium to long term.

Beyond market access, the AfCFTA offers a critical platform for the development of regional value chains, particularly in agro-processing and light manufacturing, where CEMAC holds latent comparative advantages. In the short term, progress is more feasible in limited processing activities linked to existing commodities, while more sophisticated value chain development will require deep structural change, including improvements in infrastructure, energy supply, and industrial capacity. The region’s abundant natural resources and agricultural potential provide a foundation for moving up the value chain, from raw commodity exports to processed and semi-processed goods. For instance, cocoa, timber, and palm oil can be transformed domestically or regionally into higher-value products, thereby increasing export earnings and generating employment. The AfCFTA facilitates this transition by promoting rules of origin that encourage local sourcing and regional production linkages. Therefore, countries like Cameroon can play a catalytic role by serving as industrial anchors, supporting production networks that span neighboring economies. Light manufacturing sectors, including food processing, textiles, and basic consumer goods, also present viable entry points for industrialization, given their relatively lower capital requirements and strong regional demand, but scaling these sectors will depend on addressing bottlenecks that have  limited industrial take-off in the region.

Constraints and Challenges

CEMAC’s ability to capitalize on the AfCFTA is significantly constrained by persistent challenges. The dominance of crude oil and a narrow range of unprocessed natural resources in the region’s export basket exposes member states to external shocks and limits their capacity to compete in a liberalized continental market. This structural vulnerability is compounded by a weak industrial base, characterized by low levels of manufacturing value addition, limited technological capacity, and high production costs. In most CEMAC economies, industrial activity remains underdeveloped and insufficiently integrated into regional or global value chains, reducing the scope for export diversification. As a result, while the AfCFTA creates opportunities for expanded trade, the region risks remaining confined to the lower end of the value chain.

Also, infrastructure deficits and trade-related barriers continue to undermine the region’s competitiveness and intra-African trade potential. Among these, unreliable and costly energy supply emerges as the most binding constraint, as it directly drives up production costs, limits industrial activity, and reduces firm competitiveness across sectors. Poor transport networks, inefficient ports, further compound these challenges, while persistent non-tariff barriers including cumbersome customs procedures, regulatory inconsistencies, and administrative delays continue to hinder the smooth movement of goods across borders. Limited trade facilitation mechanisms, such as inadequate digitalization of customs systems and weak coordination among border agencies, further constrain trade flows. Collectively, these factors contribute to the region’s low levels of intra-regional trade and reduce its ability to fully benefit from the AfCFTA,  underscoring the need for clear prioritization in addressing these constraints.

Policy Recommendations

To translate the AfCFTA into tangible gains, CEMAC policymakers must adopt a sequenced and implementation driven reform agenda, anchored in export transformation, production integration, and competitiveness upgrading.

• Remove the most binding constraint; energy and trade facilitation (0–2 years): Ministries of energy, transport, and customs authorities should prioritize reliable and affordable energy supply to industrial zones and trade corridors, alongside the full digitalization of customs procedures to cut clearance times. This includes eliminating key non-tariff barriers along strategic corridors such as Douala–Ndjamena and Douala–Bangui. Reforms should be time-bound and corridor-specific, with clear benchmarks (e.g., reducing border clearance time by 50% within two years). This reform offers the high marginal gain by directly lowering production and trade costs.

• Targeted export transformation in high-potential sectors (1–3 years):Ministries of trade, industry, and finance, alongside development banks, should move from broad industrial ambitions to sector-specific export strategies focused on agro-processing (cocoa, timber, palm oil) and light manufacturing. Fiscal incentives should be directed toward export-oriented firms, particularly SMEs, and tied to performance metrics such as exports, job creation, and value addition. Also, governments must operationalize technical and vocational training reforms aligned with these priority sectors.

• Anchor regional value chains through coordinated industrial policy (2–5 years):CEMAC should transition from fragmented national approaches to a coordinated regional industrial framework, designating roles across countries (for example, Cameroon as a processing hub). This requires CEMAC institutions, national governments, and investment promotion agencies to establish binding coordination mechanisms, including joint investment promotion, harmonized industrial incentives, and dedicated regional financing windows for cross-border production projects. Without such sequencing, AfCFTA opportunities will remain under-exploited and intra-regional trade will continue to lag.

Conclusion

CEMAC risks remaining on the margins of Africa’s trade transformation reforms. While the AfCFTA offers expanded market access, not taking action will reinforce commodity dependence and widen the competitiveness gap with more diversified African economies. The key policy choice is clear: treat AfCFTA as a simple market access opportunity, or use it as a catalyst for structural transformation. Without prioritizing competitiveness and export diversification, CEMAC will remain a marginal player in Africa’s evolving trade architecture.