For Dr Yakubu Nagu, the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is not just a flagship continental project — it is a test of how law, policy, and development can work together to shape Africa’s economic future. Yakubu is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow, supervised by Professor Ada Ordor, with the Centre for Comparative Law in Africa (CCLA), based in the Department of Commercial Law.

His research sits at the intersection of regional integration, trade governance, and development. He focuses in particular on the AfCFTA, examining how its legal and institutional structures influence Africa’s broader socio-economic objectives. By looking at integration through a law-and-development lens, he explores how trade arrangements can be designed to support inclusive and sustainable growth.

Dr Nagu completed his PhD in Commercial Law at UCT Law, where he examined the AfCFTA as a mechanism for advancing development across Africa. His doctoral thesis developed the Analytical Law and Development Integration Model (ALDIM) — a framework that connects trade governance with development outcomes. Using Kenya, Nigeria and Ethiopia as case studies, the thesis assessed how legal design, institutional commitments and state capacity shape the continent’s prospects for meaningful integration.

Yakubu's postdoctoral research expands on this work by refining and applying the ALDIM framework to current developments in African trade law and policy. This includes analysing new implementation challenges, emerging institutional arrangements, and evolving commitments at national and regional levels. A major output of this research is Yakubu’s forthcoming book titled AfCFTA: Implementing an Ambitious Regional Trade Agreement, which is in its final publication stages with Routledge’s International Economic Law series (Taylor & Francis).

Yakubu hopes that his postdoctoral work will contribute to strengthening African-centred approaches to trade governance. He seeks to highlight the role that law can play in advancing development objectives across the global South, and to provide analysis that is both theoretically grounded and practically useful for policymakers.
 

What excites him most at the moment? "The real-world challenges of implementation: how states translate AfCFTA commitments into national law; how regional bodies coordinate overlapping mandates and how African regional courts shape trade rules, resolve disputes, and protect rights within integration processes. These are the areas where the promises of the AfCFTA meet the realities of governance’, says Dr Nagu.