Africa Agriculture Trade Monitor 2023

The 2023 Africa Agriculture Trade Monitor, a flagship publication of AKADEMIYA2063 and the International Food Policy Research Institute, provides an overview of trade in agriculture in Africa, including analysis of short- and long-term trends and drivers behind Africa’s global trade, intra-African trade, and trade within Africa’s regional economic communities. The 2023 report highlights the growing treat of climate change to trade; looks closely at the impact of the Russia-Ukraine war on food security and poverty; draws on the report’s robust trade database to analyze African agrifood trade and nutrition; examines the types of trade agreements that successfully boost trade, and the implications for the African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement; and includes focused chapters on the competitiveness of cotton value chains in Africa and world trade and on trade integration in Economic Community of Central African States.

The 2022 Africa Agriculture Trade Monitor, a flagship publication of AKADEMIYA2063 and the International Food Policy Research Institute, provides an overview of trade in agriculture in Africa, including analysis of short- and long-term trends and drivers behind Africa’s global trade, intra-African trade, and trade within Africa’s regional economic communities. The 2022 report looks at the impact of the Russia-Ukraine war; Africa’s participation in global value chains; intraregional trade in processed agricultural products; the potential benefits of ambitious implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement, and includes focused chapters on value chains for cocoa, coffee, and tea and on trade integration in Economic Community of Central African States.

Increasing intra-African trade has long been an important development objective. The free movement of goods, services, factors of production, and people is seen as a key outcome of the African Union’s Agenda 2063, which expresses broad goals and aspirations for development and political and economic integration on the continent. The 2014 Malabo Declaration on Accelerated Agricultural Growth and Transformation for Shared Prosperity and Improved Livelihoods includes tripling intra-African agricultural trade by 2025 as one of seven major commitments. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), launched in January 2021, seeks to increase intra-African trade in order to boost industrial and socioeconomic development. With several important areas of the AfCFTA Agreement, including rules of origin, still under negotiation as of early 2023, the African Union adopted “Year of AfCFTA: Acceleration of the African Continental Free Trade Area Implementation” as its theme for 2023 in an effort to increase attention and commitment to the AfCFTA.

The 2020 Africa Agriculture Trade Monitor, the third in this series of flagship reports, presents an overview of trade in agriculture products in Africa and highlights the main impediments that affect intra- and extra-African trade. This year’s report includes chapters focusing on intra-Africa trade integration for agricultural products, including the role of nontariff measures, and on the competitiveness of African value chains that are crucial for food security (cereals, sugar, vegetable oils). The importance and measurement of informal cross-border trade for agricultural products is also examined. The final chapter looks at regional integration experiences in Southern Africa, with a focus on the Southern Africa Development Community. The report offers policy recommendations for improving agricultural exports performance, especially in the context of the unprecedented uncertainty the world is facing with the COVID-19 pandemic.

The second annual Africa Agriculture Trade Monitor assesses emerging and long-term trends and drivers shaping Africa’s trade in agricultural products and evaluates the possible impacts of current trade tensions. The 2019 report focuses on intraregional trade and competitiveness, with chapters on measuring regional trade integration and competitiveness of agriculture, a feature chapter on the potential impact of global trade tensions, and an in-depth look at trade integration in the Eastern and Southern Africa region.

Boosting intra-African trade and deepening regional integration offer an effective vehicle to speed up Africa’s economic transformation. Increasing the volumes of intra-African trade in agricultural products and the elimination of non-tariff barriers have the potential to boost industrialization and enhance competitiveness, at country and industry levels, through higher investments in connectivity and infrastructure, both physical and digital.

The African agricultural and food market is expanding quickly as indicated by World Bank projections that show that the value of Africa’s agriculture and agribusiness industry is expected to more than triple to reach USD 1 trillion by 2030, compared to 2010 (World Bank, 2013). This provides an opportunity to not only boost trade in food and non-food agricultural commodities and services within the continent but also enhance food security in Africa. Regional integration is also gaining momentum as evidenced by progress in the creation of customs unions and the initial steps in setting up a common external tariff at the regional level in a number of regional economic communities (RECs) such as the East African Community (EAC) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). The establishment of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) further reinforces the gains achieved in regional integration and opens new market opportunities for farmers and other economic operators.It has been shown that the export of higher value-added products made in Africa is greater in regional markets than in external markets outside Africa, which are typically dominated by raw material exports. However, more than a decade after the adoption of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) in Maputo in 2003 by the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) in response to the stagnation of African agriculture, Africa continues to remain a marginal player, accounting for only 2.7 percent of world trade in goods and 5 percent of world agricultural trade (Bouët and Odjo, 2019).These figures are likely to trend downwards significantly in the near term due to the economic shock caused by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The continent currently depends to a significant degree on extra-African sources for imports of food and agricultural products. The share of intra-African agricultural trade has been consistently below 20 percent in recent decades (Bouët and Odjo, 2019; AGRA, 2019). Comparable figures for intraregional agricultural trade are higher for Asia and Europe (more than 60 percent).