Speaking at the launch of the report in Accra, Head of Business and Commercial Banking at Stanbic Bank, Farihan Alhassan, said the report was borne out of the bank’s desire to have up-to date data for African businesses to help them thrive. He said “Free Trade Availability of trade data remains a challenge across Africa and the Standard Bank’s Africa Trade Barometer aims to fill part of this data gap through up-to-date survey data on the views of African businesses on the environment they operate in, their trade behaviour, trading activities and their perceptions on trade.”

“Africa is our home; we drive her growth and knowing how important businesses, especially MSMEs are in driving growth on the continent, we decided to produce this report to provide cutting edge data and insights to businesses to guide their operations and decision making. And now that the continent is set to fully implement the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCTA), it critical that we have up-to-date data for businesses to rely on,” he added.

The SB ATB was launched in 2022 with the intent of creating Africa’s leading trade index to address the information vacuum of reliable African trade data and to support and enable the growth of intra-Africa trade. The SB ATB focuses on 10 countries – Angola, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. Seven broad thematic categories are trade openness, access to finance, macroeconomic stability, infrastructure, foreign trade, governance and economy, and traders’ financial behaviour. The report is available at https://www.stanbicbank.com.gh/static_file/ghana/Downloadable%20Files/2023%20Africa%20Trade%20Barometer_Issue%203_Ghana%20Report.pdf