LONDON — Tighisti Amare, who became director of Chatham House’s Africa Programme in August 2025, is pushing African priorities into global debates as the African Continental Free Trade Area and Afrobeats widen the continent’s economic and cultural reach. She says Africa should help shape the rules of multilateral institutions that were built when much of the continent was under colonial rule, Dec. 30, 2025.
Amare has spent more than 15 years at Chatham House and now leads research and policy convenings on Africa’s political economy, security, governance and international relations, according to her Chatham House biography.
Tighisti Amare’s London mission: prioritize Africa in global discussions
In a recent interview with The World Today, Tighisti Amare described arriving in Britain looking for places where African leaders could be heard — and challenged. “My vision is to use Chatham House’s international platform to prioritize Africa in global discussions,” she said.
Amare also framed her case as a defense of cooperation at a time of fragmentation: “The world is turning inwards and becoming distrustful, but Africans are still supporters of multilateralism.”
AfCFTA: trade integration as proof of agency
The African Union says the AfCFTA agreement was signed in 2018, entered into force in 2019 and began trading in 2021, outlined in the union’s overview of the pact. Amare points to that pace as an example of African coordination even as implementation remains uneven.
The ambition is broad: cut tariffs on most goods, reduce non-tariff barriers such as border delays, and make it easier for African firms to build regional value chains instead of exporting raw materials and importing finished products.
As trading approached, Africa Renewal reported in 2020 that entrepreneurs were betting on lower tariffs, but still wrestling with customs delays and other non-tariff barriers that can stall commerce.
A 2020 World Bank assessment said full implementation could lift about 68 million people out of moderate poverty, while stressing that outcomes depend on follow-through and on how gains and losses are shared across workers and sectors.
In a November report, African Business quoted Tighisti Amare arguing that trade policy has to connect to industrial jobs: “Africa is asking for more industries, more manufacturing, because we need so many jobs.”
Afrobeats and the politics of visibility
Afrobeats offers a parallel story of African agency, carried by diaspora audiences and digital distribution. An AP report on African music’s global rise cited Spotify data showing Afrobeats streaming up more than 500% since 2017 and noted the arrival of a new Grammy category for best African music performance.
In Britain, The Guardian wrote in 2023 that Burna Boy became the first African artist to headline a U.K. stadium, a marker of how African music has moved from niche to mainstream stages.
For Tighisti Amare, the lesson is practical: momentum matters, but institutions matter more. Her goal at Chatham House is to turn attention — to Africa’s markets and its music — into sustained influence in policy rooms where global rules are set.
