Africa Freight Demand Model (Africa FDM™)

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 related to areas such as infrastructure development, resilience, food security and green minerals.

The initial stages of modelling all African trade and geographical disaggregation for agriculture have been completed, which enables both a supply, demand and total freight flow view of Africa’s agricultural commodities (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Africa's agriculture freight flows (Africa FDM™ data for 2021)

Additionally, the Africa FDM™ enables a disaggregated view of Africa’s agriculture as trade (export and import) and domestic freight flows of agricultural commodities (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. Africa's agriculture disaggregated by trade and domestic freight flows (Africa FDM™ data for 2021)

The completed processing of Africa’s mining and manufacturing trade, along with geographical disaggregation, allows the Africa FDM™ to provide a view of Africa’s agriculture, mining and manufacturing trade freight flows (see Figure 3). Note that the sea links have been removed from the maps, which are each shown on their own scale.

Figure 3. Africa's agriculture, mining and manufacturing trade freight flows (Africa FDM™ data for 2021)