Africa has spent decades building institutions, adopting continental strategies and promising to make it easier for people, goods, services and capital to move across its borders.

However, speakers at the Africa Mindset Reset Forum on Tuesday, August 25, argued that the continent’s biggest problem is no longer a lack of ideas, but the failure to make existing commitments and frameworks deliver desired results.

Claver Gatete, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, said the continent already has the institutions and frameworks required to advance integration, pointing to initiatives like the AU's Agenda 2063, its 10-year implementation plan, the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and the Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM).

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"We have all the institutions. There are no more institutions that we can create. What is important is the political will to execute. The political will should not be limited to presidents and heads of government, but should extend to ministers, directors-general and local leaders responsible for turning continental decisions into action,” Gatete said.

The challenge, the speakers said, is visible in the everyday experience of Africans trying to do business, travel or move money across borders.

RwandAir CEO Yvonne Makolo said aviation offers one of the clearest examples of how policies aimed at connecting Africa can be undermined by the costs and regulations imposed by individual countries.

She said the airline had benefited from policies such as Rwanda’s visa regime, investment in aviation infrastructure and measures that reduce operating costs.

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"Operating within the African continent as an airline is a huge challenge. High fuel prices, airport taxes and other charges add significantly to the cost of flying between African countries,” Makolo said.

Fuel prices in Africa, she said, can be 20 to 40 per cent higher than in other parts of the world, while airport charges further increase ticket prices.

"The result is a continent where travelling between neighbouring countries can sometimes cost more than travelling much farther outside Africa,” she said.

Makolo's remarks were reinforced by Rotimi Olawale, the Executive Director of the Youth Hub Africa, who cited the example of travelling from Uganda to Rwanda costing about $500, while a flight from Uganda to Dubai could cost around $550.

The disparity, he argued, illustrates the gap between Africa’s integration ambitions and the systems through which those ambitions are implemented.

Makolo said Africa has also been slow to implement agreements intended to open its skies.

She pointed to the Yamoussoukro Decision of 1999 and the launch of SAATM in 2018, saying years have passed while countries continue to negotiate bilateral air service agreements and maintain taxes and charges that make intra-African travel expensive.

She argued that faster implementation of continental aviation agreements could help reduce the cost of moving goods and services across Africa.

While governments struggle to remove formal barriers, Olawale said young Africans are already finding ways around them.

He said informal networks have become an important part of how young entrepreneurs move products across borders.

Olawale gave the example of Nigerians buying clothes from local designers and using travellers to transport the products between African cities.

"A customer can order Nigerian fabric or clothing online, connect with a tailor through a video call and then rely on someone travelling to another city to deliver the finished product. That’s the informal economy that young people in Africa are already building. So, we have to develop the policy to match them,” Olawale said.

"Policymakers need to recognise that young Africans are already creating the cross-border connections that continental frameworks seek to establish. They are already connecting despite the barriers and the challenges.”

Olawale also credited African content creators with helping change how young people view the continent by showcasing destinations and opportunities that are often underrepresented internationally.

He said this growing interest in travelling within Africa should be matched with policies that make it easier for young people to participate in cross-border commerce.

"We need to sit down as African policymakers and say, how do we help our young people on the continent to optimise this, put resources in their hands. Enough of talks. Let’s put capital in the hands of young people,” said Olawale.

Allen Kagina, the former Commissioner General of the Uganda Revenue Authority, linked the difficulty of building integrated markets to the issue of taxation saying that Africans are more likely to resist taxes when they cannot see how their contributions translate into services and opportunities.

Kagina said countries should draw lessons from pre-colonial systems, when communities contributed towards projects whose benefits they could directly see.

"Colonial rule changed that relationship by turning taxation into an instrument of extraction, creating a legacy that continues to influence how citizens perceive tax authorities. That’s why tax has the character of extraction rather than contribution,” Kagina said.

She argued that governments should make the connection between taxes and public services clearer to citizens.

"If you cannot have a line of sight between the shillings or the francs that you pay and the benefit to you, the young people, it’s always going to be extraction. Improving that relationship is essential to building trust between citizens and institutions,” she said.

Marie-Antoinette Rose Quatre, the CEO of the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) Secretariat, said the continent must also confront weaknesses in basic systems before pursuing more ambitious forms of integration.

She described the APRM as the "diagnostic centre” of the African Union, saying the institution has accumulated assessments of governance and development challenges across member states.

"We need to understand where we are, for us to understand where we want to go,” Quatre said.

Quatre argued that Africa cannot realistically pursue a Schengen-style system of free movement without first ensuring that basic national systems function reliably.

She cited birth registration as one example, arguing that countries need reliable systems for identifying their populations before they can build systems that allow people to move freely across borders.

"How can we start talking about movement of persons when we cannot even capture births in our member states? Greater investment in education, healthcare, waste management, water and sanitation, are the basic systems that underpin the continent’s ability to take advantage of newer technologies and economic opportunities,” said Quatre.

"We need to revisit the fundamentals and we need to get the fundamentals right,” she said.

Cross-border payments was another barrier highlighted by the experts, who said that some African entrepreneurs still rely on third-party systems because it can be easier or cheaper than transferring money directly between African countries.