African Union Commission Strategy to Diversify and Grow Africa’s Exports

The Project at A Glance

Africa is a dynamic continent with unique characteristics and unparalleled challenges but also huge untapped potential for trade and economic growth. The AfCFTA represents major opportunities for Africa to boost intra-continental trade and regional value chain integration, however, African economies need to strengthen regional production linkages and promote productive transformation to enhance diversification. In this context, Africa needs to build robust regional value chains that will be able to increase productive capacities across the continent and sustain export demands.

International Economics (IEC) developed a “Strategy to Diversify and Grow Africa’s Exports”, which focused on strengthening Africa’s exports to the rest of the World, i.e. boosting extra-African exports.

The project was funded by the International and Ibero-American Foundation for Administration and Public Policies (Spanish: Fundación Internacional y para Iberoamérica de Administración y Políticas Públicas, F.S.P. – FIIAPP)

What We Found

The project’s key objective was to provide recommendations aimed at enhancing Africa’s share of global trade, with a focus on a continental perspective considering the heterogeneous nature of countries. This was expected to be achieved by improving Africa’s trade competitiveness and identifying gaps that could be filled in value chains. International Economics’ work included the development of a Strategy involving the collection of information necessary to, after an in-depth assessment of the situation, propose possibilities for promoting and diversifying the export capacities of African countries, boosting their participation in international trade, and ultimately contributing to increasing sustainable inclusive economic growth and economic development throughout Africa.

Our team devised several strategies to enhance Africa’s exports globally, including maximizing the potential of trade agreements, empowering the private sector, providing targeted support and incentives for businesses, building their capacity to trade, addressing lower productive capacity, and improving the trade-enabling environment through infrastructure, logistics, and regulatory reforms.

Our Strategy and Impact

Specifically, the team:

Conducted a diagnostic of Africa’s trade and manufacturing capacity toward exports, including an analysis of the structure and patterns, challenges, and opportunities, as well as the existing trade policy and regulatory frameworks.
They identified export potential and strategic recommendations, based on global and regional successful initiatives, and produced an Action Plan to promote intra- and extra-continental trade.
They disseminated the strategy for validation at the AU Specialised Technical Committee on Trade, Industry, and Minerals, and distributed it at the AU Exporters Conference.

Our Core Solutions

As businesses seek to expand operations into new markets, the need to explore global supply chains and understand the international regulatory framework becomes crucial to competitively expand into new product/service lines and markets, reduce costs, increase revenue and reduce portfolio risks.

At International Economics Consulting, we build tailor-made strategies for both import and export-oriented business solutions. We carry out sensitivity analysis and prepare detailed resource scheduling and standard performance dashboards to track the implementation process and financial ratio performance of your products and services. We can also work on corporate leadership and change management strategy. Finally, we develop the analytics and risk matrices and use our cognitive computing insights to update these in real-time.