Ghana is advancing plans to establish a continental digital trade corridor, positioning itself at the center of efforts to streamline cross-border commerce through interoperable payments, shared digital identity systems, and harmonised regulations across Africa.
Speaking at the 3i Africa Summit in Accra, Vice President Jane Nana Opoku-Agyemang emphasized that Africa’s competitiveness would depend less on geography and more on how efficiently goods, services, payments, and data move across borders.
She argued that the continent must transition from fragmented national markets into connected trade corridors powered by digital systems.
At the centre of Ghana’s vision is a pilot digital trade corridor linking Ghana with countries including Rwanda and Zambia.
The initiative is designed to remove longstanding bottlenecks in intra-African trade by enabling seamless mobile money interoperability across borders, mutual recognition of digital identities for faster and trusted Know-Your-Customer (KYC) processes and harmonised electronic invoicing systems to simplify compliance and reduce administrative friction.
These elements are intended to function as the core infrastructure of a modern trade corridor, where transactions, verification, and settlement occur in near real time.
Rather than relying on fragmented national systems or external financial intermediaries, the corridor will allow African businesses to trade directly using local currencies, cutting costs, delays, and currency risks.
Reinforcing Ghana’s role as a continental gateway, the Vice President stressed that modern trade leadership is no longer defined by ports alone, but by efficient digital rails that move commerce.
“A true gateway today is one that ensures predictable, fast, and trusted trade flows,” she noted, highlighting that Ghana’s stability, investment climate, and hosting of the AfCFTA Secretariat positioned it to anchor such corridors.
By embedding digital systems into trade routes, Ghana aims to evolve from a point of entry into a hub that actively facilitates continental trade flows.
A major challenge the corridor seeks to solve is the inefficiency of cross-border transactions in Africa, many of which are still routed through foreign banking systems and denominated in external currencies.
The Vice President pointed to platforms such as the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) and the African Union’s Digital Trade Protocol (2024) as foundational tools that can be integrated into corridor design.
Within the digital corridor framework, these solutions will enable faster payments and settlements, reduced transaction costs and greater liquidity within African financial systems
The corridor also prioritizes digital identity interoperability as a cornerstone of trust. A lack of verifiable identity remains a key barrier to participation in formal and cross-border trade.
By enabling mutual recognition of identity systems, the corridor will allow businesses and individuals to operate across jurisdictions without repeated verification, unlocking broader participation in regional markets.
The Vice President underscored that effective trade corridors did not require identical laws, but they do require coordinated regulatory frameworks.
To support corridor efficiency, Ghana is advocating for regulatory sandboxes for cross-border innovation, shared technical standards and stronger coordination among national regulators.
This alignment will reduce compliance burdens and create a more predictable trading environment for businesses operating across multiple countries.
The Vice President highlighted the need for sustained investments in broadband connectivity cloud and data infrastructure and digital platforms supporting trade and finance.
She also raised concerns about Africa’s limited data centre capacity, emphasizing that data sovereignty must be built into the corridor model.
The Ghana–Rwanda–Zambia pilot is intended to serve as a proof of concept, with systems that are tested, refined, and ultimately scaled across the continent.
The long-term goal is to establish a network of interconnected digital trade corridors, forming the backbone of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
Concluding her remarks, the Vice President called for a shift from policy discussions to functional implementation, stressing that Africa’s future role in the global economy will depend on the systems it builds today.
“The trade corridors we design now will determine whether Africa trades on its own terms or remains dependent on external systems,” she said.
Supporting this momentum, Bank of Ghana Governor Dr. Johnson Pandit Asiama described the summit as a turning point, urging stakeholders to move beyond progress to measurable scale and real economic value creation.
By: Christian Akorlie / businesspostonline
