Export performance in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is low, unlike the other developing regions, with an intra-regional trade still weak and a trade pattern that remains very concentrated even if some progress seems to appear. Recent findings suggest that South-South trade allows more improvement in export diversification of developing economies than North-South trade. We examine the diversification of trading partners and more precisely, to what extent the nature of external trading partners matters for the geographical diversification of intra-SSA trade. We apply this economic intuition to trade relationships between the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, China) and SSA countries in a context of shifting wealth and a trade reorientation for developing economies. We use a theory-consistent and robust structural gravity model with three different dependent variables (value of bilateral export flows, binary variable for strictly positive export flows, number of export destinations) based on a worldwide database over the period 1948-2012. We attempt to compare the exports of each member of the BRICs to SSA in order to know whether there are different effects on the geographical diversification of intra-SSA trade. Globally, Chinese exports to SSA have the strongest impact on the geographical diversification of intra-SSA trade relative to the other BRICs. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]
