Armed with the realisation that accurate data drives sustainable development, the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) is empowering countries with the African Continental Input-Output Table (AfCIOT) to boost intra-regional trade.
  
According to the commission, AfCIOT is an innovative statistical tool that enables policymakers, businesses, and researchers to make informed decisions and foster sustainable economic development by decoding trends and dynamics of how goods and services are produced and traded across borders.
  
Speaking at the opening of a capacity-building regional workshop on the African Continental Input-Output Table, the Director of the ECA African Centre for Statistics (ACS) and Chief Statistician for ECA, Oliver Chinganya, highlighted the revolutionary potential of AfCIOT, particularly as trade integration was being deepened across the continent. “With the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) operational, AfCIOT allows us to analyse the broader implications of this landmark agreement on trade, investment, employment, and sustainable growth across Africa.”

He further explained that the tool also enables countries to identify opportunities for cross-border value chains and assess the impact of policy decisions on the ground. The capacity-building workshop was attended by national accountants, trade statisticians, and balance of payment experts from 12 African countries to be included in AfCIOT. The table would also help countries quantify the value of intra-African trade and optimise local value-added production, a key requirement in boosting AfCFTA.

“As we move towards AfCFTA’s full implementation, the need for robust, accurate, and comprehensive data has never been more urgent, and by providing us with the data to quantify the economic relationships and the potential gains from trade, AfCIOT enables us to make evidence-based decisions in the design of trade policies,” he added.
   
According to ECA, Africa’s trade statistics often portray economies competing rather than complementing one another, with countries exporting similar products to external markets while neglecting regional trade. The AfCIOT aims to reshape this narrative by analysing the exchange of local value-add between African countries and would help policymakers fine-tune development strategies to promote local value-added production.

However, producing an accurate and comprehensive AfCIOT remains a challenge, as “Inconsistent cross-border trade data reporting, particularly in Africa, creates significant gaps in understanding economic interactions,” he said.

He also noted that often, National Account data, which forms AfCIOT’s foundation, is incomplete or inconsistent across countries, making it difficult to build a unified table for the continent and affecting the accurate reflection of the interconnectedness of economies in Africa and globally. He called for data quality and availability to overcome these hurdles, especially with the increased role of services in the global economy.

The AfCIOT builds on ECA’s collaboration with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) to extend the coverage of African countries in the global value-chain and Trade-in-Value-Added analyses.
Eight African nations feature in the WTO-OECD Trade-in-Value-Added (TiVA) database, with plans to include 25 countries in the AfCIOT by the end of this year.

“The AfCIOT is not just a statistical construct, it is a critical tool for understanding and shaping Africa’s economic future; it will help us harness AfCFTA’s power, strengthen our trade negotiations, and design policies that support employment and sustainable development across the continent,” he said.