African countries are becoming more dependent on commodity exports at the expense of local value-adding and manufacturing, according to the State of Commodity Dependence 2016 Report by Alexandra Laurent of the Special Unit on Commodities of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad). According to the report, in 2014-2015, 91 developing countries were considered to be commodity-dependent, increasing from 82 in 2009-2010. Export commodity dependence is defined as the ratio (in percentage) of the value of commodity exports to the value of total merchandise exports. A country is said to belong to the group of “Commodity Dependent Developing Countries” (CDDCs) when this percentage exceeds 60%. Seven of the additional nine commodity-dependent states are from Africa. They are Cabo Verde, Comoros, Eritrea, Liberia, Madagascar, Sao Tome and Principe, and Sudan. Other African countries classified as CDDCs are Burundi, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Seychelles, Somalia, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Angola, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo. The only region where the percentage of commodity exports as a share of total merchandise exports dropped was North Africa (from 79 to 69%), which reflects the revival of the Egyptian economy. In terms of the number of CDDCs by region, Africa is ranked first, with more than half of the world’s CDDCs, followed by Asia and Oceania (28 countries) and Latin America and the Caribbean (17 countries).
