A leading African legal expert has issued a stark warning to the African Union (AU) and the African Development Bank (AfDB), arguing that decades of prioritising trade over institutional stability have condemned fragile states to a cycle of failure.
Speaking at the Lady Justice Joyce Aluoch Moot Competition in Nairobi, Dr Tolu Aderemi, Managing Partner of Perchstone & Graeys, delivered a keynote address that directly challenged the continent’s reliance on trade-led recovery for conflict zones.
Dr Aderemi argued that trade initiatives in countries like Libya, Iraq, Somalia, and Sudan collapsed because they lacked the foundational security and legal frameworks necessary to sustain them.
“You cannot build commercial confidence on institutional quicksand. Libya did not fail because it lacked trade opportunities. It failed because no functioning state existed to enforce contracts,” he stated.
Dr Aderemi emphasised that history shows trade is a second act that only succeeds after peace is secured, citing the Schuman Declaration and the Egypt-Israel accord as examples where proper sequencing led to success.
With intra-African trade languishing at 15-18%, compared to over 60% in the EU, Dr Aderemi warned that the AfCFTA’s projected $450 billion boost by 2035 remains a fiction while conflict persists in the Sahel and DRC.
He delivered a non-negotiable message to the AU, demanding a substantial increase in funding for the Continental Early Warning System.
Similarly, he urged the AfDB to condition trade financing on measurable peace and institutional benchmarks.
Dr Aderemi pointed to Rwanda’s post-genocide recovery, sustaining nearly 7% annual growth for two decades, as definitive proof that prioritising stability yields compounding returns that trade alone cannot deliver.
“Africa doesn’t have to keep choosing consensus after the conflict, exhausted, counting the dead. We can choose it before.
“What has been missing is not capacity. It is will,” he concluded.
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