International Trade Between European Union and Africa: Current Trends and Economic Factors of Intercontinental Business Activity

Abstract

The importance of international trade and economic openness is widely agreed in business world and governmental policy makers. The active international trade ensures the business development promoting the comparative advantages of different countries, increases consumption and customers satisfaction, strengthens competition, raises the business efficiency, etc. However, the global slowdown of world’s economics in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic occurred also had the negative impact on international trade development. This research aims to analyse the 2011 – 2020 trends and macroeconomic factors of international trade between European Union (EU-27) and Africa. The research results maintain that the European Union markets are significantly sensitive to the macroeconomic deterioration which has a strong negative impact on industrial production imports from Africa. The regression analysis confirmed that officially predicted economic growth of European Union economy will have positive trends on African production exports to EU-27. The main industries and African countries were highlighted in this research that are expected to have the most benefit from international trade growth with European Union. The impact of main African international trade partner countries’ GDP growth on EU-27 exports to Africa was also analysed. The similarities of African countries importing the most EU-27 production to this continent were revealed.