Interrogating inclusion under the African Continental Free Trade Area

Contemporary discourse concerning international trade has highlighted the distributional consequences of trade liberalisation. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), although new, has been subjected to a distributional analysis in the emerging literature on it and is expected to provide several economic opportunities for different actors on the continent subject to proper implementation and full participation. Debates surrounding whether or not the structure of AfCFTA is inclusive of different actors on the continent have featured in this discourse. The overarching goal of this article is to explore the discourse on inclusion and inclusive trade under the AfCFTA regime. The article does this by examining the various strands of literature on AfCFTA, the arguments foregrounded in this literature and the different conceptualisations of differentiation and inclusion. The article thereafter moves beyond this discourse, challenges the background ideas underlying such conceptualisations and presents an alternative lens that emphasises the heterogeneity of the political economies of African nations, thus complexifying the question of inclusion.