Africa has agreed to trade with itself. Now it must build the transport ecosystems capable of making that ambition real, and the DRC is one of the continent's most important test cases.
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Africa has signed one of the most ambitious trade agreements in modern history. However, goods do not move simply because leaders sign agreements.
They move because roads work, borders function, trucks are maintained, drivers are trained, parts are available, corridors are safe, financing exists, and service networks respond. When something breaks, the system must be strong enough to recover quickly.
This is the uncomfortable truth at the heart of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). AfCFTA aims to accelerate intra-African trade and strengthen Africa's position in global commerce.
That ambition is necessary, but Africa's deeper barrier is not always the tariff; it is the truck that cannot get a part, the border where cargo waits, the road that destroys equipment, the fleet operator who cannot finance renewal, the technician who was never trained, and the corridor that looks efficient in a policy document but fails in the rain.
Africa does not have a trade problem first; it has a movement problem.
The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa has found that inadequate transport infrastructure could limit the benefits of AfCFTA.
This finding should be treated not as a technical footnote but as a strategic alarm.
AfCFTA gives Africa the right to trade; transport gives Africa the ability to trade.
A border can be opened by policy, but a corridor is opened by execution.
Until we solve that, free trade will remain an aspiration trapped inside a legal framework. Transport is not merely what happens after production; it is part of production.
A tonne of copper is not economically useful because it has been mined; it becomes useful when it can move reliably to a processor, a port, a customer, or a factory.
A bag of cement is not development until it reaches a construction site. A container of machinery is not investment until it arrives where work can begin.
The movement of goods is not a detail in Africa's growth story; it is the story.
Every weak transport system imposes a tax—not written into law, but paid daily through late deliveries, inflated prices, idle equipment, spoiled goods, and capital trapped in inefficiency.
It is paid by mines waiting for inputs, contractors waiting for materials, and families paying more for basic goods. A truck immobilised for three days can cause more damage to trade than a tariff reduction can repair.
That is why the next phase of AfCFTA must be judged not only by how many countries ratify protocols but by how much friction is removed from the physical movement of goods.
No country illustrates this more powerfully than the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The DRC is not just another African market; it is one of the continent's great strategic crossroads, sitting at the heart of Africa, bordering nine countries, and holding minerals that are central to the global energy transition, industrial supply chains, and future energy security.
I was travelling the corridor outside Lubumbashi when we came upon a truck, fully loaded, with an engine that was dead, parked at the side of the road.
The driver had been there since the previous morning—not because the repair was complicated, but because the part was not available within 200 kilometres.
He had called every contact he had and was waiting for someone to bring a component from Lusaka.
That truck was carrying inputs destined for a mine. The mine was waiting, the contractor was waiting, and the clock was running on a delivery penalty that the driver's employer would absorb.
And on the roadside, surrounded by one of the most mineral-rich landscapes on earth, a man sat in the cab of his truck with nothing to do but wait.
That image stays with me. It is not exceptional; it is ordinary. And that is precisely the problem.
DRC’s untapped mineral deposits are estimated to be worth more than US$24 trillion.
Cobalt, copper, coltan, lithium, tin, tungsten, and gold—minerals the world increasingly needs for batteries, electric vehicles, power systems, and industrial production.
That figure is not just a measure of geological wealth; it is a measure of opportunity still locked beneath the soil and of value that can only be realised if the systems above ground are strong enough to support it.
The DRC is not simply supplying minerals; it is sitting at the centre of one of the most important industrial transitions in the world. But geology is not destiny. Reserves do not move themselves.
A country can hold the minerals of the future and still lose value through the transport systems of the past.
If the DRC gets transport right, it can help anchor African industrialisation.
If it gets transport wrong, it will remain a country through which value passes too slowly, too expensively, and with too much lost along the way.
Transformation happens when mining becomes connected to a broader economy—when minerals support infrastructure, industrial services, local suppliers, technical skills, regional trade, and domestic enterprise.
That cannot happen without transport.When transport fails, opportunity narrows. Only the largest players can absorb the cost of inefficiency.
Smaller firms are pushed out, local suppliers lose competitiveness, and jobs that should be created around the value chain never materialise.
This is one of the least discussed consequences of weak logistics: it protects scale and punishes emergence.
Africa cannot build a continental trade area on improvisation; it needs discipline. A resilient transport ecosystem must be local.
Local technicians must be trained to international standards, local parts must be available, local fleet-management expertise must be developed, and local entrepreneurs must be capable of building transport businesses that serve mines, farms, factories, and cities.
The DRC cannot simply be a route for minerals leaving the country; it must become a place where transport capability is built, owned, and scaled.
That is how logistics becomes development. AfCFTA does not need more ceremony; it needs mechanics.
It needs fewer bottlenecks, faster borders, stronger corridors, safer roads, better fleets, trained people, and reliable service networks.
Its success will not be decided only in conference halls; it will be decided at weighbridges, workshops, depots, border posts, fuel stops, and mining gates.
When mining leaders, investors, suppliers, government officials, and infrastructure players gather in Lubumbashi from 17 to 19 June 2026 for DRC Mining Week, the conversation cannot be only about production targets, mineral prices, and investment pipelines.
It must also be about the systems that make production possible: transport, maintenance, skills, corridors, safety, and local industrial capability.
That is where continental integration becomes real—or fails.
For those of us building businesses in this environment, transport is not a sector we observe from a distance; it is the daily test of whether Africa’s ambitions can survive contact with reality.
Africa has already agreed that it wants to trade with itself. Now it must prove that it can move.
Simon Kwete is Founder and Group CEO of Paramount Group DRC. He has spent his career at the intersection of Pan-African trade, transport, mining and industrial development