The Missing Link: How Completing Tunisia’s Trade Corridor Can Redefine African Commerce
By Dr Nizar Chaari
Africa stands at a historic crossroads. As the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) steadily dismantles internal tariff barriers and knits together a market of roughly 1.3 billion people with a combined GDP of about US$3.4 trillion, the continent’s physical and logistical architecture is undergoing a profound re-evaluation. For decades, the narrative of North Africa’s commercial interface with the rest of the world has been dominated by two colossal geographic anchors: the Suez Canal in the east, controlling maritime flows between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, and the Strait of Gibraltar in the west, serving as the gateway between Africa and Western Europe.
Yet as intra-African trade struggles to accelerate — it still accounts for only around 16 percent of the continent’s total trade, compared with roughly 60 percent in Asia and nearly 70 percent in Europe, according to a review tracking AfCFTA implementation by an African trade union coalition — a critical structural gap becomes apparent. The central spine of the continent, stretching from the Mediterranean basin down through the Sahara and the Sahel into West and Central Africa, still lacks a fully operational, dedicated trade artery. Completing that missing link is not a new idea; it is a decades-old infrastructure project that now needs the political and financial push to cross the finish line.
Beyond Suez and Gibraltar: The Case for a Multipolar North
Trade corridors are the circulatory system of economic integration. Suez manages the heavy global maritime transit of the East; Gibraltar commands the western maritime bridge to the Atlantic and Europe. Relying so heavily on these two extremities, however, creates a real vulnerability, not just a theoretical one. When Houthi attacks disrupted shipping in the Red Sea from late 2023 onward, container traffic through the Suez Canal fell by roughly half within months, according to United Nations Trade and Development (UNCTAD) figures, and major carriers rerouted vessels around the Cape of Good Hope, adding an estimated 10 to 14 days and thousands of nautical miles to Asia-Europe voyages. The episode was a stark reminder that a continent’s trade cannot safely depend on two chokepoints alone.
Positioned at the geographic hinge between Europe, the Maghreb, and Sub-Saharan Africa, Tunisia offers a natural median route. Historically, this territory served as an ancient crossroads of civilizations and commerce. Today, formalizing and modernizing the Tunisian corridor as a pan-African trade route can bypass congestion at both extremities, shortening transit times and reducing overhead costs for manufacturers and logistics operators alike.
A Corridor Already Under Construction
This is not a proposal to build something from scratch. Tunisia is one of six countries — alongside Algeria, Mali, Niger, Chad, and Nigeria — linked by the Trans-Saharan Highway, a roughly 9,000-kilometer road corridor connecting the port of Algiers to Lagos, with a dedicated branch running from Ghardaïa in Algeria to the Tunisian port of Gabès. Backed by the African Development Bank, the African Union, and the Islamic Development Bank since the project’s revival in the 1990s, the corridor was reported by Algerian authorities in 2025 to be roughly 90 percent complete overall, with Algeria’s own 2,400-kilometer section fully paved.
What remains is not concrete and asphalt so much as coordination: finishing the last unpaved stretches between Mali and Niger, digitizing customs procedures, and — crucially — giving Tunisia’s branch of the corridor the same institutional priority as the Algiers-Lagos backbone. A corridor that is 90 percent built but not yet harmonized at its borders delivers only a fraction of its potential value.
The AfCFTA Catalyst: Turning Infrastructure Into Economic Reality
The AfCFTA is not merely an agreement on paper; it is a call to action for physical connectivity. For it to succeed, goods must move fluidly across borders, and supply chains must be regionalized rather than overly dependent on imports from outside the continent. The World Bank has estimated that full implementation of the AfCFTA could lift Africa-wide real income by 7 percent and help move around 30 million people out of extreme poverty by 2035 — but only if the physical routes to move goods keep pace with the legal framework.
Completing and heavily investing in the Tunisian branch of the Trans-Saharan corridor would create an efficient overland and multimodal link between Mediterranean ports and West African and Sahelian economic hubs. Consider the potential for industrial manufacturing, agricultural value chains, and digital goods: when Tunisian industrial zones, automotive component manufacturers, and tech enterprises are seamlessly connected to the wider African market via a functioning central corridor, the entire continent benefits from enhanced industrial synergy.
This is not just about moving cargo; it is about energizing regional value chains. By facilitating the transit of raw materials northward for processing and finished goods southward for consumption, the corridor embodies a core philosophy of the AfCFTA: producing in Africa, for Africa.
Overcoming the Structural Imperatives
Unlocking this third gateway requires more than acknowledging a map or a highway that is nearly finished on paper. It demands a coordinated, multilateral push across three fronts:
1. Infrastructure completion, not just modernization. Finishing the remaining unpaved sections, upgrading rail connectivity where it exists, and digitizing customs systems to eliminate friction at border crossings. A modern corridor must be paperless, fast, and secure.
2. Regulatory harmonization. Aligning transit protocols, customs documentation, and security standards between North African nations and their Sub-Saharan partners, in step with the liberalization goals of the AfCFTA.
3. Public-private partnership. Mobilizing institutional investors and regional development banks — building on the African Development Bank’s existing role in financing the corridor — to fund logistics platforms, dry ports, and energy networks along the route.
A New Vision for African Sovereignty
The vision of an integrated, prosperous African market that the AfCFTA’s architects have set out will depend on the choices made today about the routes that carry its trade. Finishing what has already been started on Tunisia’s stretch of the Trans-Saharan corridor is not a distant ambition; it is an achievable, largely funded, nearly complete piece of the African puzzle — one that only needs the political will to close the final gap.
The completion of the Tunisian corridor is ultimately a statement of continental agency and economic sovereignty. By establishing a balanced triad of northern access points — Gibraltar in the west, Tunisia in the center, and Suez in the east — Africa builds a multi-channel trading architecture capable of absorbing future global shocks, whether they come from a blocked canal, a regional conflict, or the next unforeseen disruption to maritime trade.