Fousseini Traoré

Africa’s agricultural trade performance and structural barriers

Africa’s agricultural trade has been characterized by a persistent trade balance deficit over the past decade, with import bills consistently outpacing export revenues. With the world’s fastest growing population and weak domestic food systems, imports of agrifood products are increasing rapidly, raising the dependence of the continent on external markets and its exposure to global food price volatility. This vulnerability is compounded by the limited diversification of exports, which remain concentrated in a narrow range of primary commodities subject to significant price fluctuations, thereby contributing to macroeconomic instability. At the same time, continent-wide initiatives such as the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) and the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) aim to address these structural challenges. Both frameworks seek to strengthen agrifood systems, enhance productive capacities, promote value addition, and better align agricultural production with domestic and regional demand, ultimately contributing to more stable and resilient food markets. In this context, expanding intra-African trade can provide significant benefits. Greater regional integration can stimulate economic growth through wider market access, foster regional value chains, and improve food security by enhancing the availability and affordability of food across borders. However, despite broad consensus on these potential benefits, the actual level and trajectory of intra-African agricultural trade remain subject to debate, partly due to data limitations and differences in measurement approaches. This chapter, therefore, provides a comprehensive assessment of Africa’s agricultural trade performance over the past decade, examining both structural trends and persistent barriers that constrain diversification, competitiveness, and deeper regional integration.

Agricultural trade in Africa: Current trends and challenges

Agricultural trade can play a central role in meeting people’s food needs, both by increasing available supply and by boosting stakeholders’ incomes, given that 60% of the labor force works in this sector (Bonuedi et al., 2020; Wonyra and Gnedeka 2023). However, an analysis of African agricultural trade performance over the past twenty years highlights some key issues to watch. First, African agricultural trade is the lowest in the world, not helped by high costs of trading and non-tariff measures. Second, a trade deficit that has been steadily widening since 2006 as Africa has become heavily dependent on imports of basic agricultural products such as cereals. The continent currently meets more than 40% of its cereal demand on world markets. This deficit in African agricultural trade is fueled by low productivity, linked to declining yields and a lack of sufficient investment in production, storage, processing, and marketing infrastructure, and rapid population growth and urbanization in Africa which has increased demand for imported food. Third, over the past two decades, the structure of African agricultural exports has remained largely undiversified, with unprocessed cash crops continuing to be the dominant export commodity. To better understand the dynamics of agricultural trade in Africa, this brief analyzes its performance, over the 2003-2023 period, by highlighting the most dynamic countries and regional economic communities, the most exported and imported products, and the continent’s revealed comparative advantages.

The economic costs of bribes and road harassment by officials in ECOWAS