(African Economic Research Consortium, 2022-07) Mensah, Emmanuel B.; Biesebroeck, Johannes Van
We study the geographic concentration of trade flows of African countries using information on the global input-output structure from the Eora database. Most countries show a similar concentration between close-by vs. long-distance trade in their foreign input sourcing as in their export sales. However, changes over the last two decades indicate that many countries increasingly focus their long-distance trade on only one of these two dimensions. This trend is most pronounced in manufacturing industries with stronger global value chains. In line with the learning-by-exporting hypothesis, export success on distant markets is a leading predictor (Granger causes) of regional export success. Only in light manufacturing do we find some evidence of a reverse pattern, i.e., regional exports preceding global exports.