The size of intra-African trade could be doubled from the current level of about $170 billion per year to almost $400 billion by addressing the issue of availability of market information on the continent.
According to Dr. Benedict Oramah, President of the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), lack of knowledge of the continent, and limited access to trade information among African businesses constituted major constraints to cross-border trade. He cited a study on the regional value chains for leather and leather products, jointly commissioned by Afreximbank, UNCTAD, and the Commonwealth Secretariat, which found that Australia was the main source of tanned hides and skins for Southern Africa, including South Africa, even though Zambia exported the same products at lower costs and its exports were higher than South Africa’s imports.
The report also showed that South Africa imported leather that had been further prepared after tanning from India at double the price at which Ethiopia exported such leather while Mauritius and Nigeria imported leather products from Italy and Belgium at much higher costs than what South Africa and Botswana exported them.
African Business and Trade Communities aims to close the gap in this lack of information and business contacts in African countries by providing a platform for the world to interact with Africans in different sectors. Join us here on Telegram: https://telegram.me/AfricanBusinessNetwork
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