Political stability essential for Africa to unlock its full economic potential

Monday, 24 March 2025 17:15

While Kenya inaugurates a pilot project of transport of flowers by rail via reefer container from Naivasha to the Mombasa port for export to The Netherlands, in Ethiopia international flower companies flee the country because of the worsening political instability. Semafor Africa reports that the north-western Amhara region, a key flower-growing hub, has suffered a major blow with regard to one of the country’s main exports: fresh-cut flowers. To take advantage of this situation there are the neighboring Kenya and Uganda, where the companies are relocating. After five Dutch companies (Tal Flower Farms, Tana Flora, Abyssinia Flowers, Dutch Flower Group and Alpha Flora) left the country, it is now the turn of Selecta One, a German company, which is planning to quit the country, leaving more than 1,000 local personnel unemployed.

The continental and nation-branding challenge of Africa

Tuesday, 18 March 2025 07:43

An interesting article published on Semafor Africa raises the problem of the low brand awareness of African brands by Africans and their general distrust towards them. In October 2021 we published on our blog a post where we argued that it is time for Africa to develop a collective trademark system capable to raise the visibility of African brands both a continental that extra-continental level. Semafor notes that a study on the 100 brands that are most-admired in Africa shows that 80% of them are actually extra-continental brands, concluding that Africans generally prefer foreign-made to local made products and services. Since brands are a vector of a country's image and identity, this translates into a poor visibility of those countries where such products and services are made, and of Africa in general.

The African trend towards the privatization of port operations: opportunity or risk? ...Or both?

Friday, 14 March 2025 15:54

A recent article published by the Washington-based African Center for Strategic Studies analyses the presence of Chinese firms in African ports, concluding that they are active in 78 of them, out of 231 commercial ports in total (a comprehensive mapping of African ports is offered by MaritimAfrica). This presence, the article notes, is multifaceted. Distributed across 32 African countries, with a strong concentration in West Africa (35 ports), it takes various forms, ranging from building, financing or operating port facilities. Cases where Chinese companies dominate all these segments also exist, like the new Lekki Deep Sea Port in Nigeria. After West Africa, China's presence is also important in East Africa (in 17 ports), Southern Africa (15 ports), and North Africa (11 ports). In order to understand the scale of such presence, Latin America and the Caribbean host only 10 Chinese-built or operated ports, while Asian countries 24.

Special Economic Zones as drivers of development of regional value chains in the context of the AfCFTA

Sunday, 16 March 2025 15:23

Special Economic Zones (SEZs) are a particularly trending topic at the moment. The role of this policy tool was discussed during the fifty-seventh session of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) held in Addis Ababa from 17 and 18 March 2025 on the occasion of the Conference of the African Union Ministers of Finance, Planning and Economic Development. At this event, a specific round table explored the role of these important policy tools as drivers of the development of regional value chains in the context of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). A concept note developed by ECA to guide the discussions provides an overview of such tools, revealing that Africa has witnessed a strong growth in their number since 1990 (when there were only 20), reaching the considerable number of 237 in 2020, mainly concentrated in Kenya, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Egypt. However, despite this proliferation, these zones have delivered mixed results, in terms of attraction of foreign direct investment (FDI) and know-how, creation of employment and improvement of trade balances through increased exports. This is due to persistent challenges as weak cross-industry linkages and infrastructure connections. But there is more...

AfCFTA: status, achievements, opportunities and main obstacles to its implementation

Monday, 10 March 2025 15:49

A publication from AfCFTA Dialogues, a platform dedicated to promoting awareness and understanding of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), provides a concise, yet complete analysis of the current status of the AfCFTA implementation in light of the 2023 African Union's (AU) theme on accelerating the implementation of the agreement. After describing the process that led to the AfCFTA adoption, as well as the achievements and opportunities that derive from it, the document maps the key obstacles to its implementation, providing some recommendations to address them.

Political stability essential for Africa to unlock its full economic potential

The continental and nation-branding challenge of Africa

The African trend towards the privatization of port operations: opportunity or risk? ...Or both?

Special Economic Zones as drivers of development of regional value chains in the context of the AfCFTA

AfCFTA: status, achievements, opportunities and main obstacles to its implementation

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