Prominent pan-African corporate leaders have called for an urgent end to market fragmentation across the region, warning that the continent will remain globally competitive only in theory until it dismantles artificial trade barriers.
MTN Group Chairman Mcebisi Jonas and the Board Chairman of MTN Ghana, Dr. Ishmael Yamson, made this call during the MTN’s The Y’ello Chair vodcast on August 2, 2026, cautioning that operating as a cluster of small, isolated markets guarantees perpetual economic vulnerability.
Expressing deep frustration over the persistent regulatory silos choking cross-border enterprise, Dr. Yamson noted that treating sovereign markets as independent pockets cripples African businesses before they can reach global scale.
“We need to understand that together we will be bigger. If we continue to deal with small companies, they’re not going to make any impact anywhere,” Yamson cautioned, stressing that African nations are dangerously underestimating the power of collective market weight.
Yamson further observed that while non-African multinationals are often welcomed with open arms, home-grown African conglomerates routinely face bureaucratic resistance across regional borders.
“By 2050 Africa will probably be about 1.4, 1.6 billion people equal to the population of China and India. If that population is not harmonised, if that population doesn’t see itself as one continent and act as such, then we will not get the benefit of a China,” Yamson argued, calling for an urgent mind-shift among political leaders.
The economic case for immediate integration is overwhelming. According to the African Union Secretariat, the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) represents a market of 1.4 billion people with a combined gross domestic product (GDP) of roughly $3.4 trillion.
However, intra-African trade stubbornly hovers between 15% and 21% of the continent’s total trade volume – paling in comparison to intra-Asian trade at nearly 60% and intra-European trade at over 68%.
Reflecting on these disparities, both leaders urged governments to accelerate the harmonisation of regulatory, tax, and border policies to unlock genuine scale. With over 60% of Africa’s population currently under the age of 30, Jonas and Yamson concluded that political leaders can no longer afford to let historical borders stifle future opportunities, reiterating that a unified market is the single most critical precondition for lasting prosperity.
