Sailing in sync: aligning Africa’s maritime policies for smart and sustainable AfCFTA ports

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) promises unprecedented intra-African seaborne trade growth, yet Africa’s four principal maritime governance instruments – the Revised African Maritime Transport Charter, Africa Blue Economy Strategy, AU Digital Transformation Strategy, and AfCFTA Protocol on Trade in Services – address innovation, sustainability, and governance in isolation, creating regulatory uncertainty that hampers port modernization despite available financing and technology. Using directed qualitative content analysis guided by the OECD Policy Coherence for Sustainable Development framework, findings reveal no single instrument fully covers digitalisation, environmental safeguards, inclusive growth, and implementation simultaneously, creating a “polycentric incoherence trap” where ports cannot fully exploit AfCFTA’s scale economies. Temporal analysis using Kingdon’s Multiple-Streams Framework shows critical sequencing failures: AfCFTA’s market-access obligations entered legal effect before supportive innovation and environmental mandates aligned. Without coordinated action, projected 15–25% container flow growth poses substantial decarbonization risks. Illustrative scenarios suggest potential increases of 2.1–3.4 million additional tonnes of maritime CO₂ emissions annually by 2030, with African exports potentially facing EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism penalties estimated at $180–290 million annually. Through futures-cone back-casting, the study develops a minimal viable roadmap embedding green-shipping clauses, harmonized digital KPIs, and inclusive-growth metrics into existing treaties, demonstrating systematic application of resource orchestration theory to supranational policy design and providing continental decision-makers with practical implementation milestones.