CAIRO — As Egypt gets ready to host the "Africa 2019” conference scheduled for Nov. 22-23, a report published by the Egyptian Ministry of Trade and Industry expects the volume of Egyptian exports to African countries to increase moving forward.

This comes after figures published July 6 by the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) indicated the Egyptian government’s increased interest in exporting to neighboring African countries. In 2018, trade exchange between Egypt and African countries increased by 23% to $6.9 billion, compared to $5.6 billion in 2017, and Egyptian exports to African countries increased by 26.9% to reach $4.7 billion in 2018, compared to $3.7 billion in 2017.

CAPMAS also pointed out that Egyptian imports from African countries increased by 15.2% to $2.1 billion in 2018, compared to $1.9 billion in 2017.

Abdel Nabi Abdel Mottaleb, former undersecretary for research and economic studies at the Ministry of Trade and Industry, told Al-Monitor that this increase is the result of the Egyptian export development strategy that the ministry started implementing in 2016.