South Africa and global entrepreneurship stakeholders are urging stronger continental collaboration to unlock cross-border trade and innovation under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), with Ghana positioned as a key hub in the emerging ecosystem.

Speaking on the Asaase Breakfast Show on Monday (11 May),Carmen Rudd said the continent must actively remove barriers that prevent entrepreneurs from scaling across African markets.

“There’s a lot of work that we need to do to incentivise, to encourage, to also make it easy to get innovators and highly skilled individuals to think about the continent,” she said.

Rudd said GEC+Africa, an initiative under the Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN), is designed to bring together entrepreneurs, investors, policymakers and startups under one platform to promote collaboration and investment.

“The Congress is meant to bring together the entrepreneurship ecosystem… to ensure that those businesses can scale and thrive,” she explained.

She noted that the platform also focuses on cross-border expansion, saying African startups must be supported to operate beyond their domestic markets.

“The Africa conversation is how we can promote cross-border collaborations and assist entrepreneurs across the continent to scale,” she added.

Rudd said Ghana remains one of Africa’s leading startup ecosystems alongside Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt and South Africa, describing it as “innovative and highly active.”

The 2026 edition of GEC+Africa will be held in Cape Town in September, bringing together thousands of ecosystem players, including investors and policymakers.