Data analysis of US imports from West Africa: 2012 to 2021

INTRODUCTION

 The demand for consumer and capital goods has grown steadily in Africa leading to a high dependency on imports from countries like China and the United States. Major African imports, based on current import and export statistics, include automobiles and their spare parts, clothing and other fashion accessories, computers and other IT products, mobile phones, pharmaceuticals, machinery, stationery, and agricultural products. Data shows that in 2021 the United States exports to Africa valued at $26,669 million as against its imports value of $37,561.9 million, indicating a trade imbalance between the U.S and Africa for the year. The United States Census Bureau’s website, where these figures were disclosed, also revealed values of the U.S trade in goods with global partner countries by month from 1997 to date. However, this study is not to examine all branches of foreign trade between the U.S and its partner countries but to focus on analyzing data on U.S imports from countries in the West African region over the past decade. The 16 West African nations are namely Benin, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Cote d’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, and Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo.

ANALYSIS

Data for this analysis was accessed from the foreign trade page of the U.S Census Bureau’s census.gov website. A dataset of 21709 observations and 14 variables was prepared and analyzed using various RStudio packages. The dataset, showing U.S partner countries, their country codes, the imports’ end-use codes, product descriptions, and monetary value of imports, was cleaned and wrangled into a final data frame of 6471 observations and 4 variables to display the exporting countries, product descriptions, year of imports occurrence and U.S dollar value of imports. Descriptive statistics were carried out to show the number of U.S import occurrences from each country within the period.  

COUNTRY	Frequency of U.S imports (percent)
Benin	199 (2.6%)
Burkina Faso	236 (3.1%)
Cabo Verde	300 (4.0%)
Cote d'Ivoire	529 (7.0%)
The Gambia	217 (2.9%)
Ghana	702 (9.3%)
Guinea	540 (7.2%)
Guinea-Bissau	50 (0.7%)
Liberia	264 (3.5%)
Mali	396 (5.3%)
Mauritania	204 (2.7%)
Niger	475 (6.3%)
Nigeria	807 (10.7%)
Senegal	529 (7.0%)
Sierra Leone	737 (9.8%)
Togo	286 (3.8%)

 

The table above shows that the United States had its highest volume of imports from Nigeria. Sierra Leone comes after with 9.8% imports frequency followed by Ghana at 9.3%. Guinea-Bissau has the lowest frequency of 0.7%. Multi-panel line plots show the trend of yearly imports by the United States from each of the West African countries over the period of analysis.

 The facet-wrap plots show the frequency of U.S imports from each West African country over the period.  The position of the trend lines of Ghana, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone show that U.S import occurrences were significantly high in these countries but quite low in Benin and Guinea-Bissau. Notably, the plot for Nigeria shows a steady increase in the number of imports from the acclaimed giant of Africa except for the dip in 2015 and 2017 and a sharp fall in 2020; there was a significant increase in the number of U.S imports after the COVID pandemic defined the year. There was also a significant decrease in the volume of imports in 2020 for Benin, Burkina Faso, Gambia, and Niger followed by an obvious rise as shown by the upward shoot of the line. Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, and Mauritania show a decrease in the frequency of imports toward the end of the period. The statistical analysis also showed the range and average of the values of the commodities imported in U.S dollars. With the lowest value of $252, camping apparel and gear were imported from Togo in 2013. Crude oil was the commodity with the highest value of $17.224 billion imported from Nigeria in 2012. 

Mali, and Cabo Verde as countries with very low U.S imports valued at $82.5 million, $48.2 million, $38.7 million, and $35.3 million respectively. U.S Imports from the Gambia barely made a $10 million value and, Guinea-Bissau was positioned as the West African country with the lowest value of U.S imports from 2012 to 2021 at $6.8 million.

The treemap above was used to visualize the value of the commodities imported by the U.S from West Africa. The rectangles represent the countries of origin and commodities imported by the value of the commodities in U.S dollars. The size of the rectangles represented by Nigeria, Ghana, and Mauritania shows the countries’ crude oil commodity as the imported commodity of the highest value. Nigeria’s crude oil obviously shows this commodity as being a major part of U.S imports from West Africa given the size of the rectangle representing its value. Nigeria’s fuel oil and other petroleum products are also larger in value in comparison to other countries.  Cote d’Ivoire crude oil makes a very small fraction of the country’s produce, but the Ivorian economy takes the lead in the exportation of cocoa beans to the U.S as shown by the size of the rectangle representing the commodity. Ghana has crude oil as its major product for export to the U.S followed by cocoa beans as visualized by their rectangular sizes. The map shows the values of the commodities from each country of origin by the size and setting of the rectangles.

SUMMARY

Countries in West Africa contribute significantly to the foreign trade partnership between the United States and Africa. Even with the constraints of an inefficient transportation system, epileptic power supply, and trade barriers along regional corridors and borders, Nigeria is currently the United States’ 54^th largest goods trading partner and its 51^st largest supplier of goods imported in 2019, as stated by the Office of the United States Trade Representative’s website. In 2020, Côte d’Ivoire was the world's largest exporter of cocoa beans with the U.S primarily importing cocoa beans from the southern coast located country and also from its border-sharing country, Ghana. The U.S also imported bakery products from these neighboring countries. Liberia is Africa’s largest producer of natural rubber and was a large supplier of this natural resource to the United States. This study shows that the U.S has a formal trade relationship with the West African region from where it imports goods of economic importance including crude oil, fuel oil, cocoa beans, bakery products, and natural rubber.

 

REFERENCES

United States Census Bureau (2022). Trade in Goods with Africa. Retrieved from https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c0013.html

United States Census Bureau (2022) Product Detail and Partner Country [end_useimports.xlsx] Retrieved from https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/country/index.html