Co-creation Hub (CcHUB), yesterday announced the official launch of the Social Connectedness Index (SCI) Trade Platform, which provides unique and easy trading opportunities amongst African countries under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
The SCI Index measures trade opportunities that exist between two countries, based on their social connectedness index, distance, trade flows, trade value, and language spoken.
The index also reveals latent possibilities of goods and services a country can export and import to and from connected countries, as well as the estimated value of the commodities. Traders can also view the value of trade between countries.
Additionally, the platform contains information that can guide a user and inform trade decisions such as top commodities that can be traded between the countries (ranked by export value in 2018), SCI, distance between the countries, interconnected countries, country GDP, exchange rate, country region, trading blocs, total commodity demand, total commodity supply, market opportunity and country competitiveness.
This first of its kind game-changing move is a stepping stone to boosting Africa’s trading position in the global market that will further accelerate the growth and discovery of trade opportunities and networks within Africa following the commencement of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) on January 1, 2021.
CcHUB and iHub CEO, ‘Bosun Tijani said: “We strongly believe that social connectedness can facilitate trade flows by alleviating informal trade barriers previously discussed in literature – contract enforcement frictions and search costs due to information asymmetries. As such, we built an index that presents an immediate opportunity for trade flows under AfCFTA across Africa using social connectedness data from Facebook and trade flow data from across Africa.”
This move reinforces CcHub’s commitment to continue to activate a significant trading bloc in Africa, as it directs individuals that are interested in using the platform to visit scitrade.africa.
