African agricultures production and trade performance since the 1960s

As part of tralac’s capacity building initiative, tralac held a week-long workshop from 18-22 June, known as a Geek Week, for researchers and trade policy analysts at the tralac offices. The focus of the Geek Week was to provide participants with the basic skills needed to analyse trade data for research, policy formulation and decision-making purposes.

The objective of the Geek Week was to study African agricultures production and trade performance since the 1960s by individual countries. This country by country examination will be undertaken using individual papers for each country. Data will generally be sourced from the historical Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) series for both production and trade that goes back to 1961 for most indicators (but only to 2013 or 2014) and the 2001 to 2016 International Trade Centre (ITC) trade data.

Participants prepared draft research papers by the end of the Geek week focused on the changes in the country profiles over time, including a profile of the main crops and livestock production and a more macro aggregated profile such as overall production, both total and per capita for each country, real and indexed production in both total and per capita form, and indicators such as the % of GDP and employment in agriculture.