Tripling Africa´S Primary Exports: What? How? Where?

Income growth in Africa sufficiently high to achieve the internationally agreed development goals implies a rise in the region’s per capita income by the early 2020s to about Latin America’s current level. This would be associated with roughly a tripling of Africa’s primary exports. Increased African supply on world commodity markets would tend to make prices lower, but not by much, given the smallness of its market shares. Rising global demand from sustained rapid growth in natural-resource-poor Asian countries, particularly China, would moderate, or even compensate, such a potential fall in prices and provide sizeable new opportunities for Africa’s primary exports. In Africa, extractive industries would be poised best to benefit directly from China’s rising imports, while exporters of agricultural products would be more likely to benefit indirectly from rising world market prices associated with Asia’s growing primary imports.