Africa’s commercial services exports grew 6% in 2012, according to a report by the African Development Bank, suggesting the continent’s fledgling economies are starting to creep up the value chain.

Commodities still account for lion’s share of the continent’s exports and growth, but transportation, real estate, financial services, IT and telecommunications are increasingly contributing to economic growth, says the report. African consumption of home-grown goods and services coupled with growing regional integration underpinned the growth.

Fuels and minerals accounted for 69.5% of the continent’s total exports, reaching $438 billion in 2012, compared with the continent’s commercial services exports of just $90 billion.

Foreign direct investment (FDI) reached $56.6 billion in 2013 and the service sector received a small but growing share of the flows. Notably, remittances from Africans living abroad, which reached $62.9 billion in 2013, also contributed to the expansion of the African service economy.

The continent’s economies grew by an average of about 4% in 2013, compared with 3% for the overall world economy. East and West Africa boast the most rapidly expanding economies.

The poorer the country the more it grew, according to the report, which was co-authored with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the United Nations Development Program.

While upper middle income countries in the north and south of the continent grew by 3% in 2013, low-income countries posted double that growth.

Some countries on the continent look poised to resume pre-2009 recession growth, which the report attributed to increased political and social stability and a recovering world economy.

Africa’s manufacturing production, which is still nascent in large swaths of the continent, more than doubled in the past decade, going from $72 billion in 2002 to $189 billion in 2012.

The report urges African countries to follow in the footsteps of the Asian Tiger economies by focusing on the development of value-added products and services. Currently the continent accounts for only 2% of commercial service exports worldwide - a market worth $4.35 trillion in 2012.

Sophisticated value-added goods fetch a higher price on the global market and would potentially contribute to the continent’s earning power.

According to the report, for Africa to build a viable service economy it has to increase regional integration, which is still comparatively underdeveloped. Moreover in order to compete effectively with other top exporting nations, countries in Africa have to fix crumbling infrastructure, create reliable power sources and unleash private sector investment to address uneven production capacity.