African Continental Free Trade Area launches landmark initiative to create world’s most advanced digital public infrastructure for trade

JOHANNESBURG, November 17, 2025 — The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Secretariat, in partnership with the Tony Blair Institute, IOTA Foundation, and World Economic Forum, is launching the Africa Digital Access and Public Infrastructure for Trade (ADAPT), an initiative to create a common and shared digital public infrastructure for trade across the African continent. ADAPT will streamline and modernize trade in Africa by implementing an open-source, decentralized digital trade ecosystem.

Global trade, the backbone of our economy, remains one of the most inefficient industries. Every day, four billion trade documents are needed to track the shipment of goods. A single shipment, on average, requires 30 entities to exchange 240 paper copies. The complex, paper-based process leads to inefficiencies and mistakes that drive up trade costs to around 100 percent of goods’ value. 

The African continent, in particular, faces high trade barriers. Africa-specific challenges include $25 billion in annual payment transaction fees and vulnerability to document fraud, which globally costs $2.5 billion yearly. These inefficiencies severely restrict Africa’s economic integration and trade competitiveness. As an example, intra-African trade makes up only 17 percent of total Africa trade - compared to over 60 percent in regions like Europe and Asia. This is largely due to systemic and market inefficiencies. 

ADAPT is launching to fundamentally change this situation. The program will employ a suite of emerging technologies, including distributed ledger technology, starting with IOTA’s DLT, and artificial intelligence. It will replace the paper-based, fragmented systems with a unified, verifiable, and trusted digital infrastructure. It will enable national and industry-specific systems to ‘talk’ and function together and create an interactive information-sharing framework across borders, enabling mutual and seamless verification of trade transactions, payments, identities, and other trade-related activities. The ADAPT program has actively engaged with, and welcomes, active participation by other partners and funders.

As a result, all actors in the supply chain will be able to trust the integrity of the data, allowing African countries to trade with transparency and efficiency. 

Transportation delays and the need to wait for printed documents can be eliminated, allowing for a streamlined and safe flow of goods across borders. ADAPT creates the potential to double intra-African trade by 2035, unlock more than $70 billion in additional trade value, generate $23.6 billion in annual economic gains, and reduce border clearance times by more than 50 percent.

In addition to trade digitalization, the ADAPT program will open up new opportunities for large enterprises and SMEs across Africa to gain access to digital payment solutions, including digital currencies such as stablecoins. Digital currencies enable instant and cheap money transfers and asset tokenization, providing new options for trade finance.

The type of technologies that ADAPT will employ have already been successfully tested by IOTA and other partners in real-life transactions in Africa, more specifically, Rwanda and Kenya. 

In Kenya, traders have been granted access to fully digitized trade documents, making their trade transactions faster, cheaper, and more accessible for all. 

Previously, border agents in Kenya would have to log into 13 different systems to gather the necessary data for consignments. With the new system in place, agents can now access all necessary documents in one place, and by removing multiple data re-entries, 60-70 percent of manual validation steps were eliminated. Document retrieval for inspection and release, which used to be a six- to seven-hour process, could be completed in only 30 minutes. Other supply chain stakeholders also experienced major benefits, with exporters saving around $400 each per month on printing and document management, and freight forwarders lowering overhead with 50-60 percent less manual paperwork and re-keying. 

ADAPT’s implementation is first being rolled out in programs in three countries, including Kenya and Ghana. The initiative will expand into all AfCFTA and Africa Union State members starting in 2026, as further legal, technical, and governance frameworks are developed.

ADAPT will explore and apply a range of technological features to ensure a seamless, safe, and reliable trade experience. Examples of what could come into play include: 

• Cross-border recognition of digital identity: Authorities and supply chain actors are able to uniquely identify and trace the full origin and chain of custody of goods

• Auditable proof and accountability: Everyone in the supply chain, exporter, importer, banks, customs, ports etc. can create, own, and manage their digital identities, establishing fully auditable chain of custody for every good and interaction 

• Immutable documentation: Each trade document can be represented as a verifiable credential anchored on the distributed ledger, making it fully tamper-proof and auditable

• Ensured compliance: Data elements from supply chain documents and consignment journey events can be scanned using AI tools to verify consistency and compliance, reducing the risk of delays at ports

• Practical tokenization: Individual items, consignments, or containers of goods can be tokenized, making it possible to receive fast and efficient access to trade finance 

“This initiative is the cornerstone of our vision to create an inclusive and integrated continental market. It is Africa’s blueprint for the digitisation and modernisation of trade: a system that replaces fragmentation with integration, friction with trust, and inefficiency with scale,” shares AfTFCA Secretary General, H.E. Wamkele Mene. “For too long, African businesses have contended with multiple systems, repetitive compliance processes, and slow cross-border logistics. ADAPT is designed to change this fundamentally. It establishes a trusted, interoperable infrastructure—an African-built backbone for digital identity, documentation, payments, and data exchange—enabling goods, services, and capital to move with the efficiency that the 21st century demands.”

“My Institute is proud to have worked with the AfCFTA Secretariat, IOTA Foundation, and many public and private sector partners to co-design and implement this new ADAPT platform. We will provide practical support from our teams in over 17 African countries and keep bringing in the best of global technology and finance, to ensure Africa’s single digital market is African in its roots and global in its reach,” says Tony Blair, Founder and Executive Chairman of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.

“ADAPT marks a major milestone in our efforts to advance free trade and economic development across Africa. Trade inefficiencies remain one of the key barriers to business growth, yet the digitalization of trade processes has the power to transform how African economies connect and collaborate. The World Economic Forum has already launched TradeTech, an initiative focused on building interoperable digital systems and fostering a more efficient and equitable global trading environment. With our collective efforts and the collaboration of all nations, I am confident that Africa can become a global leader in digital value chains,” said Chido Munyati, Head of Africa at the World Economic Forum.

“The success of using distributed ledger technology in pilot projects in Kenya and Rwanda has made it clear that Africa is ready to embrace these changes,” shares Dominik Schiener, Co-Founder and Chair of the IOTA Foundation. “The continent sets the standard for the rest of the world, unlocking immense economic potential and creating a much more level playing field in trade through new financing opportunities for millions of businesses across the continent.”

For more information on ADAPT, check out IOTA’s blog post: https://blog.iota.org/adapt-africa-digital-trade/