Archive
Commodities
Algeria Blocks $219m Fertiliser Flow to France: Can Sub-Saharan Producers Capture the Gap?
Algiers has reportedly halted urea exports to Paris worth over $200 million—a quarter of French imports—as the Western Sahara dispute spreads into agri-inputs.
US cocoa pivot nets Nigeria $142m while Cameroon exporters hold farmgate prices amid 4.2% export slump
American demand drives 554% surge in Nigerian bean shipments, but Cameroonian purchase prices stay flat despite falling FOB rates—who wins when buyers shift and farmgate lags reality?
Why Africa Buys Bananas From Ecuador While Its Own Rot
Africa grows roughly 31 million tonnes of bananas a year, ranking among the world's three great banana regions alongside Asia and Latin America. Yet one of the continent's biggest banana buyers fills its markets from the other side of the…
Chocolate Diplomacy: How the UAE Became Africa's Next Big Cocoa Client
For most of the last century, cocoa's story ran a straight line from West African soil to European grinders in Amsterdam, Hamburg, and Zurich. That line is bending. Increasingly, it bends toward the Gulf, and the UAE is where the bend is…
“Tiny Fish, Massive Gap”: Why Kapenta Is Africa’s Next Trade Category
Long before "protein security" became a policy buzzword, small pelagic fish were already doing the job — quietly, cheaply, and almost invisibly to the export economy. Kapenta is the clearest example of a commodity Africa has never had to…
THE MACADAMIA GAMBIT: How Africa Quietly Became the World's Nut King — and Is Still Giving Away the Best Part
Africa now supplies roughly a quarter of the world's macadamia kernel and controls more than half of global export value by trade route — yet across most of the continent's producing nations, the highest-margin step in the chain, cracking…
The Blueberry Frontier: Why Africa Is the World's Next Berry Superpower
The blueberry, botanically Vaccinium corymbosum in its dominant highbush form, is a small round berry native to Asia, Scandinavia and North America, where early native peoples already recognised its health and medicinal value. For most of…
Daily Brief: Cocoa futures ease as mid-crop arrivals beat expectations in Côte d'Ivoire
Port arrivals in Abidjan and San Pedro run ahead of last season; grinders remain cautious.
Daily Brief: Benin tightens raw cashew export rules to push local processing
New measures favour domestic processors and could reshape regional raw nut flows.