In 2018, the volume of trade between Germany and all African countries combined was only 45 billion euros.¹ That doesn’t sound like a small amount at first, but if you were to look at Africa as a country, the overall balance would still only be in 15th place compared to other nations, behind Russia and Hungary. Almost half of this trade volume was in turn accounted for by the relatively industrialized emerging market South Africa² – a country which, due to its history, can hardly be compared with the rest of the continent.

One of the causes and the main problem of this lies in the hardly any value creation on the continent. Since its violent integration in the global economy by the European colonial powers, little has changed in this regard.³ Over 65 percent of exports from Africa are unprocessed food and raw materials.⁴ The most important export goods of the Greater West Africa region, for example, are cocoa, cashews and cotton with a share of over 50 percent of total exports.⁵ Mineral resources such as gold, crude oil and diamonds also play an important role in many African economies. The “resource curse” is often used as explanation here, as the extraction of raw materials creates only a few jobs, promotes distribution conflicts and can lead to inflation, which in turn has a negative effect on the export production of other economic sectors.³