Nigeria’s Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Dr. Jumoke Oduwole, has articulated a bold vision for transforming Africa’s digital trade landscape — stressing that regulatory collaboration across the continent, rather than fragmentation, is the key to unlocking Africa’s immense potential. The remarks were shared in a recent feature published by Techpoint Africa.

In the article, Oduwole argues that while digitally delivered services — such as software, online consulting, telemedicine, and digital marketplaces — represented US$114.7 billion in trade in 2024 among African countries, the continent remains a marginal player globally.

She noted that despite this volume, African firms struggle to scale across borders due to disjointed regulatory regimes.

Oduwole recalled the experience of “Hadiza,” a Nigerian tech entrepreneur whose cloud-based service for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) gained hundreds of thousands of users across multiple African countries. However, she told Techpoint, expanding beyond Nigeria proved “a maze of experimentation,” with different countries demanding unique documentation, imposing varying capital requirements, and enforcing divergent rules around taxation, data protection, consumer rights and intellectual property — hurdles which slowed and eventually cooled her expansion ambitions.

“The reality is that regulation designed for traditional businesses does not fit the digital age,” Oduwole said, emphasising the urgent need for harmonised rules across African states. “If we are to reap the full benefit of a unified African digital market, we must move from regulatory fragmentation to regulatory collaboration.”

To that end, Nigeria — which earlier in 2025 was appointed as African Union co-Champion of the AfCFTA Protocol on Digital Trade — has begun efforts to domesticate the Protocol into its national legal framework. Oduwole highlighted that the country’s ministry has already completed “the first comprehensive mapping of digitally delivered services in Africa,” creating a three-tier classification system to clearly define core digital services, digitally deliverable services, and digital marketplaces. This classification aims to ensure African governments properly recognise and regulate digital firms and their services.

In practical terms, between 2025 and 2027, the ministry plans to pilot a scheme to help at least 150 Nigerian digital firms comply with regulatory requirements ahead of cross-continental expansion. The initiative comes alongside plans for new guidance documents to help businesses navigate market entry rules across the bloc, and a broader drive to engage with other AfCFTA member states to align regulations.

At an October 2025 roundtable convened by Nigeria under the AfCFTA framework, regulators and policymakers from Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, and Nigeria held working sessions with entrepreneurs to clarify licensing and regulatory requirements — a practical step designed to break down barriers that have historically stunted intra-African digital trade.

For many African innovators and tech companies, the policy shift marks a potentially transformative moment. As Oduwole put it, “We must ensure that our rules do not fence in African innovators — but that our markets and communities benefit from their creativity.”

The article underscores a broader truth: for Africa’s digital economy to flourish, regulatory common ground may be even more critical than broadband infrastructure or startup funding. As the continent moves toward deeper economic integration under AfCFTA, Nigeria’s push — led by Dr. Oduwole — could serve as a blueprint for unlocking the digital trade potential of millions of African entrepreneurs.