As Africa Month wraps up, the focus on the ease of trading in Africa has taken centre stage. The emphasis is on the continent feeding its people amid geopolitical tensions that have seen food prices skyrocket, and climate change not making it easy for food producers.
Food For Mzansi spoke to a senior analyst at the Bureau for Food and Agricultural Policy (BFAP) on international trade and agricultural policy, Dr Mmatlou Kalaba, on the status of trading in Africa.
Tiisetso Manoko: What are the main agricultural products driving Africa’s export trade, and how have these trends evolved over the last decade?
Mmatlou Kalaba: African agricultural exports increased from $14 billion in 2010 to about $20 billion in 2023. The largest product group is the crops, unprocessed and semi-processed. They account for about 60% of all exports in 2023. It was in the lower 40% in 2010. Semi-processed food categories remained around 13-15% of total exports.
Animals and animal products make up a small share of total agricultural exports. Less than 5%. So, only crops and crop products improved, at the expense of semi-processed food and animal products. However, these vary from region to region, as well as country to country.
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How do trade agreements like the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) impact intra-African agricultural trade?
During this period, 2010 – 2023, intra-African trade remained at less than 30% of agricultural exports. In other words, 70% of African exports go outside the continent. AfCFTA has not had any effect. Even though it was signed in 2019 and countries have made commitments, parliaments ratified it, it is still not being implemented. All those actions are mere intentions and commitments, but not actions.
For example, tariffs have not been reduced due to AfCFTA. That is yet to come when all other issues have been addressed, like rules of origin, sensitive sectors like sugar, and pharmaceuticals.
What is working better, but can still be improved, are regional agreements.
What are the key barriers African farmers face in accessing international markets?
The leading barriers to international markets are internal, such as infrastructure and logistics. These make African products uncompetitive, since poor infrastructure leads to high transport costs, and a result affects the competitiveness in other markets. On agriculture in general, things like agro-processing hubs, storage, abattoirs, etc, tend to be lacking.
As a result, a large share of African exports are in the category of unprocessed or semi-processed products. Therefore, Africa then misses out on opportunities to add value and create jobs at agro-processing levels.
What policy changes could help overcome them?
Agricultural products are generally affected by sanitary and phytosanitary measures (SPS). These regulations are allowed by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to be imposed at levels higher than the global standard and allow importers to discriminate by region (or origin). So, the WTO allows these if those regulations are based on science.
And generally, the developed world uses these measures as they have a relatively high number of science institutions to focus on these, i.e., citrus black spots, fruit flies, etc. On the other hand, Africa’s science capacity is less than that of the developed world, and hence it does not use SPS and other measures to introduce equivalent measures to protect its products.
How do global market fluctuations and climate change affect Africa’s agricultural trade competitiveness and food security?
This also differs from country to country, or region by region. For example, Africa as a continent is a net exporter of agricultural products. But sub-Saharan Africa (Africa minus North African states and South Africa) is a net importer of food. And largely, that’s how food security is managed, or food shortages are addressed.
Market fluctuations and climate change events have generally been accepted as part of the realities. If one thinks of the recent cause of fluctuations as the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which started about three years ago. That affected markets and food security first due to shortage of important agricultural inputs such as agrochemicals and fertilisers.
Secondly, due to high prices because of those inputs. The effect spilt over to productivity and subsequently high food prices. Usually, African farmers tend not to benefit from high food prices as governments tend to intervene in favour of consumers, such as banning exports or introducing other policies that do not assist farmers in improving incomes from such market fluctuations.
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