Sentiment Analysis of Intra-Regional Trade in Africa: A Case Study of COMESA

Understanding the sentiment nature of Trade Policy documents is a crucial step in both fostering global and regional trade. Moreso, the sentiments present in trade policy documents offer valuable insights into the direction, attitudes, and political atmosphere amongst member countries. This research aims to provide a sentiment analysis of one of Africa’s crucial trading blocs, COMESA, using Natural Language Processing. By using Machine Learning techniques, we arrived at the conclusion that the COMESA Trade Policy document has mostly positive sentiments with preferences for ’Member States’, ’Transit of Goods’ and ’Common Market’ to name a few. The research will lay the groundwork for future sentiment analysis of other global and regional trading blocs.