The state of Intra-African trade and investment

Abstract

An understanding of the scale, trends and composition of intra-African trade is crucial for the effective design and implementation of policies to boost that trade. This chapter provides an overview of the scale, trends and composition of intra- African trade for the period from 1996 to 2011. Due to data limitations on services and capital, the analysis focuses mainly on trade in goods. In addition, emphasis is laid on developments within the eight regional economic communities considered by the African Union as the building blocks of the future African Economic Community (AEC) as laid out in the Abuja Treaty. Table 1 shows the affiliation of each African country to the eight recognized regional economic communities and affiliation to various other regional communities. As is evident in the table, overlapping memberships of regional economic communities is a characteristic feature of the African regional integration process. Interestingly, Algeria, Cape Verde and Mozambique are the only African countries that are members of only one regional community.