South Africa’s four trade union federations – COSATU, FEDUSA, NACTU and SAFTU – in partnership with ITUC-Africa, met over the weekend at the sidelines of the L20/G20 summit in George, South Africa, to deliberate on the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and its implications for workers across the continent. We convened at a decisive moment in Africa’s economic trajectory, united by a common resolve: the AfCFTA must serve workers and not exploit them!

The AfCFTA must not become a blueprint for deregulated markets and unchecked liberalisation. It must be a vehicle for structural transformation, democratic control of resources, and industrial development that centres working people and rejects neo-colonial patterns of extraction.

Trade Must Serve People – Not Profit

As African trade unions, we have long argued that trade policy cannot be separated from the lived realities of workers. Our economies remain locked in a pattern where we export raw wealth and import manufactured poverty. The rules of global trade continue to benefit the North at the expense of the South, keeping African economies in a cycle of dependency and underdevelopment.

The AfCFTA is unfolding within a global context of rising protectionism, fractured multilateralism, and escalating trade wars. These are not Africa’s battles, yet we bear the brunt of their consequences. The time has come to reclaim our sovereignty, challenge dependency, and demand a new trade agenda rooted in equity, dignity, and justice.

Our Demands:

We reject austerity in all its forms – it stunts development, punishes workers, and undermines democratic governance. We reject the lobal North’s approach to pitching and proposing different trade agreements with different African governments rather than dealing with Africa as bloc. Instead, we demand:

• The European Union, China, the United States, Russia and many other countries to deal with Africa as a bloc under the guiding rules of the AfCFTA.
• Progressive taxation and an end to illicit financial flows to build the fiscal space necessary for social investment.
• Public ownership of key sectors such as energy, transport, and health to protect public interest and reinvest in communities.
• Gender equity through redistributive measures that empower women, especially those in the informal economy.
• Freedom of movement and full labour rights for all workers, regardless of national origin, to defeat xenophobia, Afrophobia and realise Pan-African solidarity.
• Binding labour protections and social clauses within AfCFTA to prevent social dumping, union-busting, and informalisation.
•  African payment systems adoption and implementation to facilitate trade within Africa’s borders.
• Simplify and facilitate trade in all its forms especially to protect informal cross border traders including women, youth and persons with disabilities.

Trade unions must not be treated as an afterthought in this process. Our participation in the governance of AfCFTA must be institutionalised and resourced. We cannot build a just AfCFTA without the full and active involvement of labour.

Way forward:

To shape a progressive African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), organised labour in Africa recommits itself to a set of urgent and transformative actions. First, we must strengthen industrial policy capacity across the continent and secure the necessary resources to support sovereign, worker-led development strategies that break the cycle of dependency and underdevelopment. In tandem with this, we must take an uncompromising stand against xenophobia by defending the rights of migrant workers and challenging the elite narrative that scapegoats migrants while protecting capital and suppressing wages.

To reinforce our demands and sharpen our interventions, we will deepen our investment in research and evidence-based policy proposals that expose the myths of corporate propaganda and articulate alternatives grounded in workers’ lived experiences. A crucial aspect of our advocacy is the insertion of robust social clauses into the AfCFTA framework to ensure that labour rights, environmental protections, and social safeguards are not sacrificed in the name of trade liberalisation. These must be enforceable and accompanied by clear mechanisms for accountability.

The upcoming AfCFTA review cycle provides a critical opportunity to challenge and renegotiate any provisions that entrench inequality or marginalise labour. It is not merely a technical exercise, but it is a platform for political contestation, and we must occupy it fully. To this end, we will coordinate labour input across the continent through a dedicated African trade union alliance that enables shared organising strategies, knowledge production, and collective action.

Social dialogue must become a cornerstone of national AfCFTA implementation processes. These platforms must be used to secure worker participation, monitor compliance, and hold governments accountable to a pro-worker agenda.

We reiterate that the AfCFTA is not automatically progressive. Without organised resistance and visionary leadership from labour, it risks entrenching the very inequalities it claims to address. Our collective task is to reshape the AfCFTA into a tool for inclusive development, democratic control, and economic justice.

We believe that this is not a time for passive engagement. It is a clarion call to organise, to resist, and to build. We stand ready to shape Africa’s trade future not in the image of capital, but in the service of its people.

Issued by:
COSATU, FEDUSA, NACTU and SAFTU

Media Enquiries:
Zanele Sabela
National Spokesperson, COSATU
Mobile: +27 79 287 5788 or +27 77 600 6639
Email: zaneles@cosatu.org.za

Or

Betty Moleya
FEDUSA Communications Officer
Mobile: +27 63 736 5533

Email: communications@fedusa.org.za