In Africa, population is not the only factor that is growing fast. The UNCTAD Handbook of Statistics 2023, released yesterday, shows that in 2022, African developing economies experienced one of the highest rise in exports (16.9 per cent) at global level. Unfortunately, the structure of African states remains strongly concentrated in primary goods, which accounted for 79 per cent of merchandise exports, with fuels representing 42 per cent of such exports, followed by ores, metals, precious stones and non-monetary gold. Particularly low, instead, are food exports, representing a modest 11 per cent of outward trade flows of the continent, as shown in figure 1.