Africa presents an opportunity for South Africa to expand its markets, given the political impetus to create a continental free trade area in Africa, which will provide duty free access to countries which South Africa has no preferences. On South Africa’s part, the issue of export competitiveness becomes critical, especially given that third party countries such as China, Brazil and India are currently competing successfully with South Africa in countries where South Africa has preferences, such as SADC.

This brief provides a snapshot of South Africa’s trade performance with African trading partners. The aim is to give an idea of South Africa’s main partners, and the major products or sectors that South Africa is trading in. All data is sourced from the United Nations (UN) International trade Centre (ITC) TradeMap database and data is analysed over the review period from 2010-2016. To analyse performance and trends we make use of two main indicators, namely market share and growth with the latter calculated as a compound annual growth rate (CAGR). As this is a snapshot analysis, the analysis provided is purely descriptive.