Intra-African agricultural exports have grown faster than that of the rest of the world in the last decade.
According to the African Agricultural Trade Monitor, this is especially true for many semi-processed and processed agricultural goods.
A senior research fellow at the Washington-based, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Antoine Bouet told GBC Radio’s Joyce Anim-Ayeko that Intracontinental trade flows are responding well to emerging trends in domestic food demand.
This information is contained in the third annual report of the Africa Agriculture Trade Monitor (AATM), presented at the recent African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF) Virtual Summit in Kigali, Rwanda.
The report says that African exports are now diversified and are expanding into emerging and fast-growing countries such as Brazil, Russia, India, China, Saudi Arabia, Viet Nam, Pakistan, Turkey and Malaysia.
This diversification has resulted in a progressive decrease in the EU’s share as a top destination for African exports, from 45 percent between 2005–2007 to 36 percent in 2016–2018.
Mr Bouet who is also a co-author of the 2020 Africa Agriculture Trade Monitor (AATM) elaborates on the performance of the continent as far as exports are concerned.
“African agricultural exports perform roughly as well as other world agricultural exports, but a few African products, out-perform for example unprocessed products like sesame seeds and tomatoes and semi-processed and processed products like soups and broth or sucrose.”
“According to the findings, intracontinental exports, shares of emerging cash products and processed food products are expanding while the shares of more traditional export products are contracting.”
“Among food products, the data indicate increased export shares for Maize and wheat since 2008 but especially for processed foods, such as soups broth and food preparation reflecting rules in processed food consumption along with demographic shifts, growing urban food demand and changing Lifestyles and habits in rural areas.”
Mr Bouet also talks about some of the adverse findings in the report of the Africa Agriculture Trade Monitor.
“The African trade deficit in staple food products increased particularly for the main cereals, the sugar value chain and the vegetable oil value chains which showed a deficit near $40 billion in 2019 a four-fold increase from $10 billion in 2003. Nonetheless, economic and population growth in Africa outpaced the rest of the world and this leads to a strong natural growth of African imports. And there are many agricultural products for which the African trade balance is positive cocoa, coffee, tea, sesame seed, cotton, tomatoes, for example.”
Mr Bouet mentioned that trade policies and border formalities continue to inhibit trade while non-tariff measures remain real impediments for African agriculture trade. These include sanitary and phytosanitary measures, conformity assessment and distortionary domestic agricultural support in the importing countries such as US, EU, Brazil and China.
Story filed by Joyce Anim-Ayeko.
