Agriculture | Food Processing & Packaging | Ingredients | Food & Hospitality

After the great success of agrofood & plastprintpack West Africa in Abidjan in 2018 and a long Covid-related break, fairtrade and their local Ivorian partners 2A are now coming back to Côte d'Ivoire and Francophone West Africa with agrofood West Africa 2024.

agrofood West Africa will take place in conjunction with plastprintpack West Africa in the brand-new Abidjan Parc des Expositions from 08 to 10 October 2024.

In addition to Côte d'Ivoire, fairtrade in West Africa serves Nigeria with the agrofood Nigeria, and Ghana with agrofood Ghana.

Food & packaging technology: With imports of such technology of 93 million euros in 2022, Côte d'Ivoire is the second largest investor in food & packaging technology in West Africa after Nigeria. (VDMA)

Packaging technology: Ivorian imports of packaging technology climbed from 24 million euros in 2020 to 36 million euros in 2022. (VDMA)

Food trade with Côte d'Ivoire: With a trade volume of USD 11.3 billion, Côte d'Ivoire is the largest food market in West Africa, ahead of Nigeria with USD 8.9 billion. According to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), Côte d'Ivoire imported food worth USD 3.1 billion and exported food worth USD 8.2 billion in 2021. This makes the food trade with Côte d'Ivoire an 11.3 billion USD business.

Food & beverage ingredients: With a population of well over 420 million (2022), which according to the World Bank will rise to 800 million by 2050, West Africa is a huge food market. Expenditure in the F&B sector is growing steadily, and F&B production is by far the largest segment of the West African processing industry. Accordingly, the demand for food and beverage ingredients is rising continuously.

West Africa's food and packaging technology imports grew from €496 million in 2015 to €750 million in 2022, which corresponds to an annual increase of 6.1% between 2015 and 2022. (VDMA)

• Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development of Côte d‘Ivoire
• Ministry of Commerce, Industry and SME Promotion of Côte d‘Ivoire
• Embassies of Austria, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Türkiye

According to GTAI Germany Trade & Invest, Ivory Coast is becoming the breadbasket of West Africa. Agriculture and the food industry, especially in Abidjan, have been very dynamic for years, both in production and processing. Both sectors also enjoy a prominent regional position. They supply not only the domestic market but also the other francophone countries of the region, such as Burkina Faso, Mali, Guinea, Niger, Togo and Benin.


The French-speaking West Africa is a rather homogenous market of about 110 million inhabitants

The increasing demand for food throughout the rather homogenous French-speaking West African market of 110 million inhabitants and the good general economic situation in Côte d'Ivoire continue to offer positive prospects for suppliers of agrofood technology.   

With the exception of Guinea, all countries use the franc CFA franc, which is linked to the euro. The currency facilitates not only the overseas export of machinery from Europe and Asia to Abidjan, but also the export of food within the French-speaking countries of West Africa.

Excellent pre-conditions for agrofood West Africa.

The 5th edition of agrofood & plastprintpack West Africa took place at the Radisson Blu Hotel Abidjan Airport in Abidjan from 20 to 22 November 2018.

80 exhibitors from 17 countries participated, among them many of the world's leading companies in their sector. The exhibitors came from Austria, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Ivory Coast, Morocco, Netherlands, Nigeria, Russia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tunisia, Turkey, United Kingdom and USA.

The remarkable number of 1,461 high quality visitors discussed their investments as 53% of the visitors planned to invest over the next 12 months.

50 speakers from around the globe enriched the 3-day conference program including the Bosch seminar & the VDMA symposium.