Building Value Chains Will Drive Africa Forward

Africa needs to find ways to better leverage its strengths, such as a young and growing population and its wealth of natural resources, to enable it to better offset the challenges presented by global headwinds.

As well as concerns about increasing trade restrictions and supply chain disruptions globally, Africa faces a raft of internal challenges and sluggish growth, said Hanan Morsy, Deputy Executive Secretary Programmes and Chief Economist of the ECA at the opening session of CoM2025.

But the continent's strengths, which include the opportunity to leapfrog over legacy challenges with technology, position it well to create sustainable and inclusive development.

Currently, progress in increasing intra-African trade relative to total trade has been limited at about 15.8, substantially less than other regions.

But on the upside, the profile of trade within the continent is more positive than global trade, with a higher level of manufactured exports at 46 compared to 24 of value-added goods 2019-2023 as a percentage of trade with the rest of the world.