The aim of this report is to explore South Africa’s cultural goods trade with selected African countries from 2007 to 2017, with reference to the current cultural policy environment at the continental and regional level affecting such trade.
The aim of this report is to explore South Africa’s cultural goods trade with selected African countries from 2007 to 2017, with reference to the current cultural policy environment at the continental and regional level affecting such trade. The UNESCO (2009) Framework for Cultural Statistics is used to identify cultural goods, with trade data sourced from UN Comtrade (2018).
South Africa’s industrial policy framework emphasises sectors with the potential to stimulate higher value added growth and employment, including the CCIs. The country’s trade strategy reflects a strong orientation towards the African market, particularly in view of the importance of this market for South Africa’s manufactured exports. A key part of this strategy is a developmental approach to regional integration, emphasising the three pillars of trade integration, infrastructure development and industrialisation. This study is thus important in the light of South Africa’s signing of the Agreement to Establish the Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) in July 2018.
The results of the study indicate that South Africa’s overall deficit in cultural goods trade has narrowed markedly in the period 2014-2017. This is due to persistent cultural good export growth (especially in the Visual Arts and Crafts domain) coupled with weak or declining import growth. South Africa’s cultural good export growth has outstripped growth in total commodity exports since 2011.
In its bilateral cultural trade with the selected African countries, cultural good exports are highest in absolute terms to Namibia and Botswana, followed by Kenya, Nigeria and Ghana; cultural good imports are highest from Botswana, Namibia and Kenya, followed by Egypt, Nigeria and Ghana. South Africa runs a cultural trade surplus with all the countries under study except Egypt.
Intra-industry trade (two-way trade within a product category) expansion is associated with higher value added and lower adjustment costs to trade expansion. IIT between South Africa and the selected African countries varies significantly by domain and partner, however it is found that IIT is more extensive with a number of African countries than with the country’s BRICS partners.
The study finds that it is important to investigate cultural trade in larger domains, like Visual Arts and Crafts, at the sub-domain level, particularly for Jewellery, Craft and Other visual arts. These sensitive sub-sectors could form part of South Africa’s defensive interests in the AfCFTA trade negotiations. At the same time, an offensive stance on export promotion in Books and Press, Performance and Celebration, and Visual Arts and Crafts domains in the AU market will help to reduce South Africa’s global trade deficit in these domains.
