The Determinants of Agricultural Export Growth in South Africa

South Africa has relatively not been affected that significantly by the global food end economic crises. Although, the exports of South Africa’s traditional agricultural exports showed a moderate dip over the last two years. However, the country’s agricultural export base that earns valuable foreign currency is quite shallow. Against this background the study indentified ten agricultural export products which showed a significant increase in exports over the last years. These emerging agricultural exports form the basis for the analysis of the determinants of export growth. The identified determinants will provide a guideline for future trade diversification. An augmented gravity model was applied to investigate factors such as transaction cost, market size, the stage of economic development, exchange rate fluctuations and the impact of trade agreements on the export flows of the selected products. Various factors were found to have an significant impact on trade flows amongst which: economic market size, supply capacity and physical market size.