The impacts of China's economic policies on Sino-African agricultural trade: evidence from the Gravity Model Analysis

The rapid economic growth of China and some African countries provides tremendous opportunity for the agricultural trade. Both China and African countries have made great efforts in achieving win-win cooperation between the two economies. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of impacts of various factors on bilateral agricultural trade between China and Africa. The fixed effect Gravity model is adopted in the study to assess the impacts of different factors on Sino-African bilateral agricultural trade, based on the various datasets covering 1992-2010. The economic growth and rising agricultural production are found to be the two key factors to drive Sino-African's future bilateral agricultural trade. Therefore, the focus should be put on the long-run effects of investment in promoting bilateral agricultural trade. Moreover, the agricultural cooperation should be enhanced to improve the agricultural production and fully use the comparative advantages in both sides