Intra-African Trade Crosses USD 200B Mark in 2024
According to a report by the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), intra-African trade reached USD 208 billion in 2024, representing a 7.7% year-on-year growth. The report was entitled “African Trade and Economic Outlook 2025: African Resilience in a Changing World Order” was released on 30 March 2025.
The report attributed to robust growth to the slow but steady roll-out of the African Continental Free Trade Area (#AfCFTA) which is being driven at the sub-continental level by the various Regional Economic Communities (#REC).
The Southern African Developing Countries (SADC) led the pack with USD 58.1 billion in exchanges. The Economic Community of West African States (EVOWAS) came in second with USD 52.8 billion in trade. At the country level, the big players remain South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt.
Productwise, Afreximbank also performed a gap analysis between export potential and actual export for certain product categories. The analysis revealed that Machinery, Minerals and Chemicals are some product categories have the largest export potential to boost intra-African trade.
The report also pointed out that improved infrastructure played a role in boosting the movement of goods. National trade policies to promote intra-Africa trade are also contributing to more trade within Africa. Indeed, Nigeria ratifying the AfCFTA gave the #FTA a big boost.
In terms of external trade partners, the European Union (EU) maintains its position as the top trading partner of Africa, ahead of China. The EU accounted for 31% of total exports to Africa while China was some way behind at 12.6%.
From another perspective, we note that intra-EU trade accounts for nearly 70% of the total external trade. In Africa, inter-African trade only accounts 15% of the total external trade. The deep disparity indicates that much effort is still required.
African exports rose 10% in 2024 toUSD 682 billion while imports grew modestly at 2.4% to USD 719 billion. Thus, Africa managed to reduce its trade deficit from USD 80 billion in 2023 to USD 37 billion in 2024.
For 2024, Africa’s total trade, both within and outside the continent, amounted to about USD 1.4 trillion. There is still much room to enhance Africa’s production capacity and to elevate Africa up the global value chain (#GVC) in order to realize the full potential of the #AfCFTA. In other words, there is still some way to go before Africa graduate from exporting commodities and minerals to manufactured goods.