Maria L.C. Bertram is international trade consultant for Global Insight (www.globalinsight.com), which provides consulting services, data, and forecasts for more than 200 countries and many industries. Global Insight's trade & transportation practice specializes in consulting, data, forecasts, and analysis for global trade and transportation trends.
Since the early days of the industrial revolution, Africa has traded on its wealth of natural resources, exporting raw materials needed to stoke the forges and feed the factories of more developed nations. Despite the spread of industrialization and the dawn of the digital age, that remains the case today. But Africa's fortunes may be looking up. Soaring demand for Africa's raw materials, coupled with rising global commodity prices, have raised its international stature. Today, Africa commands attention not only from its traditional trade partners, like the United States and Europe (see Figure 1), but from fastgrowing Asian economies as well.
A prime example is the shift in demand for African petroleum over the past decade. Historically, Europe has been the largest importer of Africa's crude petroleum, largely because of geographic proximity and former colonial ties. In recent years, the United States has emerged as a big market, becoming the second largest importer of African oil by 2005.
Although Europe and the United States will continue to be the largest importers of African oil, their import volumes are expected to remain fairly flat. But as demand stalls in the West, it will rise in the East. And when it comes to oil, the thirstiest nation of them all will be China.
China's double-digit economic expansion has made it a huge consumer of oil. Currently on track to overtake the United States as the world's largest energy consumer, it's already looking to Africa to fulfill some of its demand for crude. Statistics bear that out. In 1995, China imported less than 2 million tons of crude petroleum from Africa; within a decade, that number increased more than eightfold. By 2010, we expect to see that number quadruple again, to 60 million tons or more. To facilitate that trade, China has been pumping money into Africa's transportation infrastructure.
Mineral wealth a magnet for Chin
At the same time, Africa can expect to see strong demand for its minerals, both from industrialized nations and from growing economies. In 2000, Africa supplied an estimated 158 million tons of dry bulk materials to the world, while importing a little over 102 million tons.
Africa's dry bulk exports are dominated by metal ores, scrap metal, and coal; together they account for 70.9 percent of Africa's dry bulk export tonnage. Combined, these exports are expected to see growth on the order of 1.5 to 2.0 percent between now and 2015.
Historically, Europe has been the chief market for Africa's dry bulk exports, consuming 59 percent of Africa's exports in 2000 and an estimated 63 percent in 2005. Indeed, Africa supplies Europe with one-quarter of its dry bulk imports, including coal, stone, and phosphates.
As in the case of crude oil, however, China promises to alter that equation. Although Europe will continue to be the largest importer of Africa's dry bulk materials, China has become the fastestgrowing importer, with dry bulk imports growing at 5 percent each year through 2015.
Containerized trade still stuck in low gear
Although Africa has never been a major player in the containerized trade arena (it accounts for only about 8 percent of the world market), its volumes continue to show steady, if unspectacular, growth. Africa's exports (measured in twenty-foot equivalent units, or TEUs) grew by roughly 9 percent a year between 1995 and 2005.
Its trade balance remains somewhat lopsided, however. African imports surpassed exports by nearly 1 million TEUs in 2000. And the imbalance is likely to widen. Imports are expected to grow at an average rate of 5.3 percent per year between 2005 and 2015; exports will lag slightly behind, growing at a projected annual rate of 4.1 percent
Although imports in general are expected to see only moderate growth, demand for a few containerized commodities will grow at double-digit rates. For instance, imports of plastic products are expected to grow at 14 percent annually through 2015. Metal products, refrigerated meats, fish and dairy products, and refrigerated fruits and vegetables are also expected to see annual growth in the neighborhood of 11 to 12 percent.
Africa's containerized exports are less diversified, with refrigerated fruits and vegetables, nonagricultural food products, and nonferrous metals representing a combined 44 percent of its exports (as measured in TEUs). Growth rates are generally expected to be moderate but slower than import growth. While foreign investment in Africa's infrastructure has helped drive export growth in raw-material and low-valueadded products, inadequate investment in manufacturing is inhibiting growth for containerized manufactured goods
As with other major commodity groups, Europe represents Africa's largest containerized trading partner, accounting for 42 percent of Africa's imports and 49 percent of its exports (as measured in TEUs). But Europe's relative importance to Africa's container trade is expected to diminish as China elbows its way into the market. If China continues its pattern of investment, it will be consuming 7 percent of Africa's containerized exports (as measured in TEUs) by 2015 and will be supplying 14 percent of Africa's imports. (Projected trends in containerized trade volumes are shown in Figure 2.)
Positioned for growth
Despite concerns about political stability and the health of Africa's workforce, Asian trade and investment in Africa continues to accelerate. According to the president of the Africa Development Bank, China alone is pledging $20 billion in infrastructure and trade financing to Africa over the next three years.
The effects of that investment are already reverberating across the continent. China's foreign direct investment in Africa (currently reported at $1.6 billion) is not only facilitating trade of natural materials but also is helping to develop low-cost manufacturing capabilities, which will contribute to long-term containerized trade growth. Chinese companies have already helped create an estimated 800 operations in Africa—a step that could lessen the region's dependence on natural resources for export growth and diversify its economic base.
Although Africa still has many problems to overcome before it can emerge as a major economic power, demand is not one of them. With Asian nations eager to tap what Africa has to offer, the continent's trade prospects have never looked brighter.
The new funding brings Amazon's total investment in Anthropic to $8 billion, while maintaining the e-commerce giant’s position as a minority investor, according to Anthropic. The partnership was launched in 2023, when Amazon invested its first $4 billion round in the firm.
Anthropic’s “Claude” family of AI assistant models is available on AWS’s Amazon Bedrock, which is a cloud-based managed service that lets companies build specialized generative AI applications by choosing from an array of foundation models (FMs) developed by AI providers like AI21 Labs, Anthropic, Cohere, Meta, Mistral AI, Stability AI, and Amazon itself.
According to Amazon, tens of thousands of customers, from startups to enterprises and government institutions, are currently running their generative AI workloads using Anthropic’s models in the AWS cloud. Those GenAI tools are powering tasks such as customer service chatbots, coding assistants, translation applications, drug discovery, engineering design, and complex business processes.
"The response from AWS customers who are developing generative AI applications powered by Anthropic in Amazon Bedrock has been remarkable," Matt Garman, AWS CEO, said in a release. "By continuing to deploy Anthropic models in Amazon Bedrock and collaborating with Anthropic on the development of our custom Trainium chips, we’ll keep pushing the boundaries of what customers can achieve with generative AI technologies. We’ve been impressed by Anthropic’s pace of innovation and commitment to responsible development of generative AI, and look forward to deepening our collaboration."
Progress in generative AI (GenAI) is poised to impact business procurement processes through advancements in three areas—agentic reasoning, multimodality, and AI agents—according to Gartner Inc.
Those functions will redefine how procurement operates and significantly impact the agendas of chief procurement officers (CPOs). And 72% of procurement leaders are already prioritizing the integration of GenAI into their strategies, thus highlighting the recognition of its potential to drive significant improvements in efficiency and effectiveness, Gartner found in a survey conducted in July, 2024, with 258 global respondents.
Gartner defined the new functions as follows:
Agentic reasoning in GenAI allows for advanced decision-making processes that mimic human-like cognition. This capability will enable procurement functions to leverage GenAI to analyze complex scenarios and make informed decisions with greater accuracy and speed.
Multimodality refers to the ability of GenAI to process and integrate multiple forms of data, such as text, images, and audio. This will make GenAI more intuitively consumable to users and enhance procurement's ability to gather and analyze diverse information sources, leading to more comprehensive insights and better-informed strategies.
AI agents are autonomous systems that can perform tasks and make decisions on behalf of human operators. In procurement, these agents will automate procurement tasks and activities, freeing up human resources to focus on strategic initiatives, complex problem-solving and edge cases.
As CPOs look to maximize the value of GenAI in procurement, the study recommended three starting points: double down on data governance, develop and incorporate privacy standards into contracts, and increase procurement thresholds.
“These advancements will usher procurement into an era where the distance between ideas, insights, and actions will shorten rapidly,” Ryan Polk, senior director analyst in Gartner’s Supply Chain practice, said in a release. "Procurement leaders who build their foundation now through a focus on data quality, privacy and risk management have the potential to reap new levels of productivity and strategic value from the technology."
Businesses are cautiously optimistic as peak holiday shipping season draws near, with many anticipating year-over-year sales increases as they continue to battle challenging supply chain conditions.
That’s according to the DHL 2024 Peak Season Shipping Survey, released today by express shipping service provider DHL Express U.S. The company surveyed small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to gauge their holiday business outlook compared to last year and found that a mix of optimism and “strategic caution” prevail ahead of this year’s peak.
Nearly half (48%) of the SMEs surveyed said they expect higher holiday sales compared to 2023, while 44% said they expect sales to remain on par with last year, and just 8% said they foresee a decline. Respondents said the main challenges to hitting those goals are supply chain problems (35%), inflation and fluctuating consumer demand (34%), staffing (16%), and inventory challenges (14%).
But respondents said they have strategies in place to tackle those issues. Many said they began preparing for holiday season earlier this year—with 45% saying they started planning in Q2 or earlier, up from 39% last year. Other strategies include expanding into international markets (35%) and leveraging holiday discounts (32%).
Sixty percent of respondents said they will prioritize personalized customer service as a way to enhance customer interactions and loyalty this year. Still others said they will invest in enhanced web and mobile experiences (23%) and eco-friendly practices (13%) to draw customers this holiday season.
The practice consists of 5,000 professionals from Accenture and from Avanade—the consulting firm’s joint venture with Microsoft. They will be supported by Microsoft product specialists who will work closely with the Accenture Center for Advanced AI. Together, that group will collaborate on AI and Copilot agent templates, extensions, plugins, and connectors to help organizations leverage their data and gen AI to reduce costs, improve efficiencies and drive growth, they said on Thursday.
Accenture and Avanade say they have already developed some AI tools for these applications. For example, a supplier discovery and risk agent can deliver real-time market insights, agile supply chain responses, and better vendor selection, which could result in up to 15% cost savings. And a procure-to-pay agent could improve efficiency by up to 40% and enhance vendor relations and satisfaction by addressing urgent payment requirements and avoiding disruptions of key services
Likewise, they have also built solutions for clients using Microsoft 365 Copilot technology. For example, they have created Copilots for a variety of industries and functions including finance, manufacturing, supply chain, retail, and consumer goods and healthcare.
Another part of the new practice will be educating clients how to use the technology, using an “Azure Generative AI Engineer Nanodegree program” to teach users how to design, build, and operationalize AI-driven applications on Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform. The online classes will teach learners how to use AI models to solve real-world problems through automation, data insights, and generative AI solutions, the firms said.
“We are pleased to deepen our collaboration with Accenture to help our mutual customers develop AI-first business processes responsibly and securely, while helping them drive market differentiation,” Judson Althoff, executive vice president and chief commercial officer at Microsoft, said in a release. “By bringing together Copilots and human ambition, paired with the autonomous capabilities of an agent, we can accelerate AI transformation for organizations across industries and help them realize successful business outcomes through pragmatic innovation.”
That challenge is one of the reasons that fewer shoppers overall are satisfied with their shopping experiences lately, Lincolnshire, Illinois-based Zebra said in its “17th Annual Global Shopper Study.” While 85% of shoppers last year were satisfied with both the in-store and online experiences, only 81% in 2024 are satisfied with the in-store experience and just 79% with online shopping.
In response, most retailers (78%) say they are investing in technology tools that can help both frontline workers and those watching operations from behind the scenes to minimize theft and loss, Zebra said.
Just 38% of retailers currently use artificial intelligence-based prescriptive analytics for loss prevention, but a much larger 50% say they plan to use it in the next one to three years. Retailers also said they plan to invest in self-checkout cameras and sensors (45%), computer vision (46%), and RFID tags and readers (42%) within the next three years to help with loss prevention.
Those strategies could help improve the brick-and-mortar shopping experience, as 78% of shoppers say it’s annoying when products are locked up or secured within cases. Part of that frustration, according to consumers, is fueled by the extra time it takes to find an associate to them unlock those cases. Seventy percent of consumers say they have trouble finding sales associates to help them during in-store shopping. In response, some just walk out; one in five shoppers has left a store without getting what they needed because a retail associate wasn’t available to help, an increase over the past two years.
Additional areas of frustrations identified by retailers and associates include:
The difficulty of implementing "click and collect" or in-story returns, despite high shopper demand for them;
The struggle to confirm current inventory and pricing;
Lingering labor shortages; and
Increasing loss incidents.
“Many retailers are laying the groundwork to build a modern store experience,” Matt Guiste, Global Retail Technology Strategist, Zebra Technologies, said in a release. “They are investing in mobile and intelligent automation technologies to help inform operational decisions and enable associates to do the things that keep shoppers happy.”
The survey was administered online by Azure Knowledge Corporation and included 4,200 adult shoppers (age 18+), decision-makers, and associates, who replied to questions about the topics of shopper experience, device and technology usage, and delivery and fulfillment in store and online.