Africa’s bilateral food trade

This chapter on Africa’s bilateral food trade (i.e. trade with non-African partner countries) turns the spotlight onto the changing pattern of trade with traditional partners and the growing relationship with emerging partners. It complements the discussion in Chapter 2 (on Africa’s global trade flows and its decomposition into agricultural trade flows, food trade flows and agricultural inputs trade flows), in Chapter 5 (on formal and informal intra-African food trade) and in Chapter 9 (on the World Trade Organization (WTO) legal framework as it pertains to food trade and food security). In this chapter, bilateral food trade flows and the trade regimes underpinning them are brought into sharper focus. The chapter begins by examining the changing patterns in Africa’s food and agricultural imports and exports before going on to discuss the trade policy aspects of these flows.