Study and Estimation of Iran-Africa Trade Completion

Africa accounts for nearly 14 percent of the world population. This continent has abundant tropical agricultural products and plentiful resources and underground mines. Of 54 African countries, 6 members including Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Sudan are identified as North Africa and other members are called Sub-Saharan area. In Africa, 11 countries have petroleum reserves amounting up to 87.9 billion barrels. Among African countries, there are apparent differences such as heterogeneous economic structure, different and unbalanced development levels, various political systems and cultural and ethnical diversity. Based on the latest statistics of International Monetary Fund (IMF), Africa has only 1.9 percent of world trade in which 5 countries including South Africa, Algeria, Morocco, Libya and Egypt account for more than 56 percent of Africa’s overall trade. 33 African countries are economically developed in the least level. The economic integration in the region is emerging in the framework of regional economic arrangements by recommendations and collaborations of African Development Bank (ADB), World Bank and other international institutions. About 27 of 56 members of Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) are African countries. The average growth rate of GDP of Africa has been more than 5 percent in 2005. Africa’s trade with rest of the world has increased from 272 billion dollars in 2000 to 544 billion dollars in 2005. Africa’s trade balance has been positive in this period. The study of Iran-Africa relations during post-revolution era indicates that the base and foundation of these relations have been political rather than economic, so that Iran-Africa non-oil trade exchanges are not so important. Of course, Africa can be a proper market for introducing Iran's products and services. This paper has computed the cosine index of Iran's Exports and Africa's imports mutually, then has classified African countries into different groups in terms of trade completion with Iran; and has prioritized the target members of Africa with aim of promoting trade with Iran.