Africa is progressively opening its markets to intra-continental trade, yet a substantial trade finance gap continues to constrain the commercial activity that market integration is expected to generate. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) illustrates this tension: reducing tariffs, improving preferential market access and addressing non-tariff barriers can make cross-border trade more attractive, but these measures do not ensure that businesses have the liquidity required to take advantage of new opportunities. Market access creates the conditions for trade. Finance helps firms turn those conditions into transactions. Without sufficient working capital, commercially viable opportunities may remain unrealised, regardless of the tariff preference available.

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Across Africa and Latin America, citizens are increasingly asking the same question: can the state actually deliver? The challenge is no longer simply achieving economic growth, but turning growth into productive transformation, jobs, competitiveness, and shared prosperity. At the heart of this debate is the idea of a “capable state”: one that coordinates economic actors, mobilizes capabilities, and creates the conditions for businesses and productive ecosystems to flourish. The capable state is not a return to the interventionist model that both regions have experimented with, often unsuccessfully. It represents a different vision of state capacity: not a state that seeks to control the economy, but one that enables it to transform. Its success is measured not by the reach of its control, but by the productive capabilities it unlocks. Have African and Latin American countries achieved this? Not yet. The gap between citizens expectations and the states ability is eroding public trust. And, in some contexts, fuelling political upheaval and regime change. Continue reading on LatinoAmérica21.