Intra-country trade across Africa is stuttering as businesses struggle to find the foreign currency, most notably the dollar, needed to pay for imports. This shortage has been caused by the depreciation of local currencies, higher interest rates and capital flight in the continent’s developed markets, the latest Standard Bank Africa Trade Barometer (ATB) shows. This barometer was launched last year to address the information vacuum surrounding African trade data and is now one of Africa’s leading trade indexes, supporting the growth of intra-Africa trade. The fact that most surveyed businesses were small businesses is one of the central value-adds of the publication.
