La planète laitière et la place de l’Afrique de l’Ouest dans la consommation, la production et les échanges de produits laitiers

The global dairy sector is growing steadily due to the increased dairy requirements of a growing population and a gradual shift in diets. While Asian countries are, since a long time, at the heart of this dynamic, which stimulates the development of exports in three main geographical areas (European Union, New Zealand and the United States), the place occupied by Africa is studied here specifically. With a focus on the countries of West Africa, this paper successively discusses the consumption of dairy products, the production of milk and the exchange of dairy products. This analysis uses long-term statistics from FAO (1961 to 2017) and customs statistics from 2000 to 2017 (for the database BACI) or 2018 (COMEXT). An attention is paid to the question of imports of these countries, particularly of "fat filled milk powder" (a product that corresponds to a mixture of vegetable fat and milk powder) from the European Union (EU). Given the low tariffs applied at the borders and the highly competitive nature of these products, there is a debate about the future of local milk production and the strategy deployed by the European authorities to support or not, through its agricultural policy, the African agriculture's development.