| Čoahkkáigeassu: | Africa's exports have always been concentrated in primary commodities and recently, due to high prices and new discoveries, the importance of these exports has substantially increased. A distinctive characteristic of these commodities is that their world prices are volatile, with wide and unpredictable fluctuations. Evidently, these fluctuations have corresponding effects on export revenues. The price movements are not symmetrical hills and valleys. They are typically generated by shocks in supply or demand that result in temporary 'stockouts': periods in which global stocks of the commodity fall below some accepted threshold. During stockouts prices spike, followed by long periods of gentle decline. This produces a pattern of prices in which the normal state is for prices to be mildly depressed, interspersed by a few periods of exceptionally high prices. These periods of price spikes are, by their nature, major economic events that are exceptional and unpredictable. Africa is currently in the midst of one of these price upswings, as illustrated below. For both oil and the other non-agricultural commodities prices have approximately doubled.
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