The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), through the Trade Policy Staff Committee (TPSC), publishes every year a National Trade Estimate Report on Foreign Trade Barriers (NTE Report) to describe the most significant foreign barriers affecting U.S. exports of goods and services in the main markets abroad. Prepared on the basis of the input of US companies engaged in international trade in response to a notice published in the Federal Register, the NTE Report gives an overview of the main trade barriers in key destination markets of US exports, including in some African countries. The 2024 edition of the report describes trade barriers in countries such as Algeria, Angola, Cote d’Ivoire, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa and Tunisia. The most frequent barriers that US companies indicate when exporting to these States can be summarized as follows:

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In 2011, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) published a booklet titled “why Africa has become a net food importer?”. The publication argued that Africa started to grow its food deficit since the mid-1970s, despite its vast agricultural potential, due to a combination of factors such as: population growth, low and stagnating agricultural productivity, policy distortions, weak institutions and poor infrastructure. The booklet also noted that the wealthier countries in Africa are those with the highest food imports per capita (USD 185 per year in real terms), while Africa’s low-income countries, mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa, import far less food per capita (USD 17 per year), but have higher difficulties in covering their food imports bills, as the reserves of hard currency derived from exports are minimal, and insufficient to cover the costs of such imports.

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