The contemporary global trade architecture is unravelling. In an era once marked by liberalised markets and multilateral trade cooperation, we now observe a steady retreat into protectionism, transactionalism, and outright economic nationalism. At the epicentre of this rupture stands South Africa, whose longstanding but increasingly frayed trade relationship with the United States has reached a new nadir under President Donald Trump’s second administration. With the imposition of a new 30% import tariff on South African goods—part of a wider recalibration of U.S. trade policy—the moment has arrived for South Africa to reconsider its role not as a peripheral actor in a Western-dominated global economy, but as a continental anchor for African self-determination and regional economic integration.
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s office has rightly raised alarm over these developments, flagging the tariffs as a “barrier to trade and shared prosperity.” And indeed, the blow extends beyond simple pricing distortions. The economic message is underpinned by political antagonism: an overtly hostile U.S. foreign policy that has sought to punish South Africa for its land reform legislation, its global alliances with Russia and China, and its perceived opposition to American foreign policy in the Middle East.
The Trump administration has not only escalated trade tariffs, but is actively dismantling cooperation mechanisms. South Africa now stands on the verge of being ejected from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), a programme that has historically underpinned much of South Africa’s non-commodity exports to the United States. Additionally, investment sentiment is being eroded by the withdrawal of U.S. funding for renewable energy cooperation and inflammatory moves such as inviting Afrikaners to apply for refugee status in the U.S.
With these fractures now laid bare, Pretoria must respond not only with protest, but with strategic reconfiguration. South Africa should pivot toward becoming the architect and principal sponsor of intra-African trade and investment. The pathway to this future lies in activating the full promise of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), whose legal and institutional scaffolding is already in place, but which now requires an anchor state with both political will and economic weight to drive its implementation.
The African Trade Report 2024 offers an illuminating snapshot of Africa’s trade structure. Despite comprising 55 countries and over 1.4 billion people, intra-African trade accounts for less than 18% of the continent’s total trade—compared to over 60% in Europe and nearly 40% in Asia. This underperformance is not a reflection of demand constraints but of infrastructural bottlenecks, policy misalignment, and lack of productive integration. South Africa, with its relatively advanced manufacturing sector, mature financial markets, and institutional strength, is best positioned to catalyse a transition from a fragmented continental market to an integrated economic bloc.
Critically, the opportunity is not just strategic—it is commercial. As the global economy becomes more volatile due to political tensions, climate risk, and technological disruption, African economies must urgently diversify both their trading partners and their supply chains. The post-COVID era has already exposed the fragility of globalised supply chains, with bottlenecks in ports, shortages in semiconductors, and volatility in logistics and shipping markets. These disruptions have disproportionately affected African exporters, whose reliance on distant and singular markets makes them acutely vulnerable.
Diversifying toward intra-African value chains can offer resilience. South Africa can lead this agenda by investing in strategic infrastructure that connects the continent—from rail corridors to cross-border fibre networks, from regional power pools to integrated logistics hubs. These projects should be underpinned by blended financing models—using a mix of public capital, development finance, and institutional investment—to crowd in private sector participation and lower risk premiums.
The SADC region presents an immediate and pragmatic starting point. As one of Africa’s more economically cohesive regions—with existing customs union mechanisms, overlapping infrastructure projects like the North-South Corridor, and relatively strong trade complementarity—the SADC can serve as a testbed for broader AfCFTA implementation. South Africa should prioritise high-impact, transnational infrastructure investments that enable productive capacity to be scaled across borders, and unlock latent trade corridors.
For example, a reinvigorated focus on the Beira and Walvis Bay corridors can provide new logistical routes for exports from Zambia, Zimbabwe, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, while creating ancillary investment opportunities in warehousing, customs modernisation, and border efficiency technologies. Furthermore, new Special Economic Zones (SEZs) and agro-industrial parks along these corridors can attract FDI, generate jobs, and foster cross-border value chains.
From a trade diplomacy perspective, South Africa must also reposition itself as an Afro-centric standard setter. The continent’s regulatory fragmentation continues to hinder market access and deter cross-border investment. By championing harmonisation of standards—on customs procedures, investment law, digital trade, and financial regulation—Pretoria can enhance the operating environment for regional commerce. Such harmonisation will be key to lowering non-tariff barriers, which currently dwarf tariff costs in many African markets.
The development of regional capital markets is equally important. For intra-African trade to thrive, African businesses need access to trade finance, working capital, and cross-border payment infrastructure. South Africa’s sophisticated financial services sector—particularly its banks, pension funds, and stock exchanges—can be leveraged to build a pan-African investment and clearing ecosystem. The Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) should explore dual-listing frameworks with regional bourses and support the development of instruments tailored for infrastructure, trade, and SME finance.
Furthermore, South Africa’s role in the digital economy must be amplified. As mobile penetration soars across Africa, and with it demand for e-commerce and fintech, the opportunity to build a pan-African digital trade backbone is within reach. Investing in data centres, 5G corridors, and cross-border digital ID systems will not only facilitate intra-African e-commerce but also create the regulatory infrastructure for a continent-wide digital single market.
None of this, however, can be achieved without political resolve. The push toward African economic self-determination will encounter resistance—not only from global powers that benefit from the current asymmetries, but from domestic constituencies wedded to rentier models of commodity extraction and import dependency. It is for this reason that South Africa’s political leadership must reframe intra-African trade as a national imperative—one that is vital for long-term job creation, industrial rejuvenation, and geopolitical relevance.
Indeed, the shift toward intra-African trade is not about autarky or isolation. Rather, it is about repositioning South Africa within a diversified portfolio of partnerships—one where African markets, rather than Western capitals, form the bedrock of our external engagement. Engagements with new partners in the Gulf, Southeast Asia, and Latin America should also be pursued, but with Africa at the centre of our economic diplomacy.
Equally, South African businesses must be incentivised to look northward. Government should expand instruments such as export credit guarantees, risk insurance, and trade facilitation grants to encourage firms to enter new African markets. Moreover, by embedding trade and investment promotion offices in strategic African capitals, and establishing dealmaking platforms aligned with AfCFTA protocols, Pretoria can shift corporate risk perceptions and unlock private capital flows.
The broader objective must be structural transformation. For too long, Africa’s engagement with the world has been extractive—built around the export of raw materials and the import of finished goods. Intra-African trade offers a path to break this cycle by enabling industrialisation, diversification, and the deepening of domestic value chains. South Africa’s leadership in this context is not only desirable—it is essential.
In conclusion, the ruptures in U.S.–South African trade relations should not be seen merely as a challenge, but as a clarion call. This is a pivotal moment—one in which South Africa can either lament its marginalisation or lead a new continental agenda of economic sovereignty. The choice should be clear. Africa does not need gatekeepers. It needs builders, connectors, and visionaries.
Let South Africa lead the way.
Written by Farai Ian Muvuti, the Chief Executive Officer of The Southern African Times, 2023 winner of the Young Entrepreneur of the Year award by the South African Chamber of Commerce UK, an advisor on the board of the Africa Chamber of Commerce, and a contributor to Arise News, Al Jazeera, and the BBC.
