Africa FDM™

Africa Freight Demand Model™

The Africa Freight Demand Model (Africa FDM™) is being developed to provide intelligence on freight flows in Africa. In doing so, the Africa FDM™ aims to support informed macrologistics decision-making and planning regarding areas such as infrastructure development, resilience, food security and green minerals.

The initial stages of modelling all African trade and related geographical disaggregation used supply and demand to provide a total freight flow view of Africa’s agricultural, mining and manufacturing commodities. An initial example of the modelling outputs for all African agriculture is shown in Figure 1.

**Figure 1: Africa’s agriculture freight flows (Africa FDM™ data for 2021)**

Additionally, the model enables a disaggregated view of trade (export and import) and domestic freight flows of Africa’s agriculture, mining, and manufacturing commodities. See Figure 2 for an example of this disaggregation for Africa’s agriculture.

**Figure 2: Africa’s agriculture disaggregated by trade and domestic freight flows (Africa FDM™ data for 2021)**

The most recent Africa FDM™ modelling outputs provide a full view of Africa’s sectoral (agriculture, mining and manufacturing) freight flows. These flows can be split into global and continental (Africa-only) sea link freight flows. They can also be viewed as land freight flows, which exclude sea links and are each shown on their own scale. These maps are provided in Figures 4 to 11 below.

**Figure 3: Africa’s global agricultural freight flows (including sea links) based on the most recent Africa FDM™ data**

**Figure 4: Africa’s continental agricultural freight flows (including sea links) based on the most recent Africa FDM™ data**

**Figure 5: Africa’s land freight agricultural flows (excluding sea links and to own scale) based on the most recent Africa FDM™ data**

**Figure 6: Africa’s global mining freight flows (including sea links) based on the most recent Africa FDM™ data**

**Figure 7: Africa’s continental mining freight flows (including sea links) based on the most recent Africa FDM™ data**

**Figure 8: Africa’s land freight mining flows (excluding sea links and to own scale) based on the most recent Africa FDM™ data**

**Figure 9: Africa’s global manufacturing freight flows (including sea links) based on the most recent Africa FDM™ data**

**Figure 10: Africa’s continental manufacturing freight flows (including sea links) based on the most recent Africa FDM™ data**

**Figure 11: Africa’s land freight manufacturing flows (excluding sea links and to own scale) based on the most recent Africa FDM™ data**

The continent’s total (combined agriculture, mining and manufacturing) global, continental and land freight flows can similarly be displayed on maps.