For all its efforts to strengthen ties with the region and the continent, South Africa imported a minuscule 3% of its needs from other African countries during the first six months of this year.
The balance of trade with Africa is weighted eight-to-one in South Africa's favor, aggravated by the economic collapse of the country's largest continental trading partner, Zimbabwe. S-Africa is not importing its canned tuna from other African countries, but mainly from Asia.
The story is the same for most other African countries, whose transport networks were designed to serve colonial rather than neighboring markets. Trade patterns are further distorted by preferential trade agreements, such as the free trade agreement between the Southern African Customs Union and Europe, and the US's Africa Growth and Opportunity Act.
South African exports to Africa are mainly value-added items such as machinery, vehicles, chemicals, base minerals and prepared foods. Its imports from Africa comprise lower-value products such as tobacco, beverages and prepared foodstuffs, wood products and textiles.
According to the World Trade Organization, only 8% of Africa's total exports in 2001 were intra-African, compared with intra-EU trade of 62%.
The Southern African Development Community (SADC) Free Trade Agreement aims to promote intra-SADC trade by phasing out import tariffs by 2008. Tariffs between zero percent and 17% have already been scrapped, and those up to 30% will be phased out over three years.
The benefits in terms of increased intra-SADC trade are already evident in products such as clothing from Mauritius, which pays a 20% tariff on entering South Africa, as opposed to 40% for clothing from non-SADC countries. Mauritius, like other African countries as Ghana, Madagascar, Ivory Coast and Senegal, is an important producer of canned tuna.
Research by the International Trade Center suggests that the Southern African Customs Union has the potential to increase imports from the SADC by $1,9-billion, three times the current level. This figure would reduce South Africa's trade balance with the SADC from 8:1 to a more acceptable 2,5:1.
Five products offered the greatest potential for increased trade: fish, wood and wooden building materials, leather, exotic foods and beverages, and textiles and clothing.
"There is a perception that Africa does not produce any of the products South Africa is importing and that, where these products are being produced, they are of a lower quality than those produced elsewhere in the world," says Liz Whitehouse of Whitehouse and Associates. This also counts for canned tuna products.
Other barriers to increased intra-regional trade are lack of information on reliable African suppliers, high transport costs, lack of cooperation between the regional standards bodies and unreliable infrastructure, especially for chilled or frozen products.
Whitehouse says an area that needs urgent address is the lack of harmonized trade and product standards. South Africa continues to purchase canned tuna from Thailand and the Philippines, but refuses entry to canned tuna from Mauritius because it does not meet the standards set by the South African Bureau of Standards. This could change with better communication between the region's standards authorities.
Another obstacle to trade is the proliferation of trade blocs. There are 14 economic units in Africa, many with overlapping memberships.
Problems of payment are no longer a major barrier to trade. Jonathan Berman, head of merchant banking at Barclays Africa, says that most African countries have more liberal exchange control regimes than South Africa, though less liquid foreign exchange markets, which raises the cost of purchasing currency. "Ideally, any company developing a project in Africa would want to maximize its borrowings in local currency to reduce the currency risk."
The stronger rand should help in reducing South Africa's trade balance with the continent. But so long as Africa remains trapped at the lower end of the commodity value chain, trade will remain pretty much a one-way street in South Africa's favor, and that of the Asian canned tuna industry.