This paper draws on a general equilibrium poisson pseudo maximum likelihood model augmented by a dynamic capital accumulation to estimate the effects of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) on intra-African trade flows. The empirical results show that the AfCFTA could raise intra-African...

The African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) was established in 1993 as a crisis management institution on the heels of the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s. It has since grown into Africa’s foremost regional integration bank, and is playing a critical role in supporting the implementation of...

The agreement establishing the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) has been attracting a great deal of attention in academic and policy circles, as well as within the international development community. The growing interest in the AfCFTA partly reflects the fact that the African continent is...

This policy piece surveys the potential of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) as a historical framework for setting Africa on the path toward structural transformation and sustainable development. After evaluating the part that the landmark continental trade integration reform will play...

When asked why the level of intra-regional trade in West Africa is low despite regional integration efforts, the literature highlights the poorly diversified structure of economies, the non-application of community arrangements, the inconsistency or mismanagement of trade policies, supply constraints,...

Regional integration occupies a prominent place in the economic policies of most sub-Saharan African countries. However, despite different waves of initiatives across the African continent, the majority of African regional schemes have not managed to achieve their ambitious goal of promoting sustainable...

This study provides an ex ante short-run impact analysis of tariff liberalisation in the context of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) on the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) customs union regarding tariff revenue and import values. As with other customs union on the continent,...

This paper sets out to disprove the German philosopher Hegel’s dictum about people learning nothing from history, by looking at the lessons to be learned for the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) from the European Union’s experience of regional integration. Since its foundation in 1957, European...

Agrifood standards impede trade by increasing compliance costs, but they can also enhance trade by signalling quality. This paper disentangles the trade costs and demand-enhancing effects of two important standards—technical barriers to trade, and sanitary and phytosanitary measures—on (i) global agricultural...

The role of exports in promoting economic growth has been widely acknowledged. This paper analyses the link between exports, imports, and growth performance in Kenya using time series data. Despite trade liberalization and export promotion policies pursued over time, Kenya’s export growth has been sluggish,...

Growth and development in middle- and low-income countries often come at an environmental cost, but is that trade-off always necessary? This study uses a computable general equilibrium model to estimate the macroeconomic and environmental impact of the world’s most significant plurilateral trade agreement,...

In this study, we quantitatively assessed the effect of China’s zero-tariff treatment on export diversification in beneficiary countries in Africa. We assessed its overall effect and its effect on particular industries and regions. The results showed that, overall, zero-tariff treatment significantly...

We applied the threshold autoregressive and difference-in-differences techniques to examine the effects of adopting a common currency on bilateral trade flows between member states of the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC) customs union, over the period from 1980 to 2013. We found...

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Rules of Origin (RoOs) determine the conditions for the application of the Agreement’s tariff preferences. The effectiveness of existing preferential trade agreements within the continent is undermined by heterogeneous RoO regimes and costly trade facilitation...

This paper examines the factors influencing intra-Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) trade by empirically investigating whether the Free Trade Area (FTA) contributed to trade growth from 1997 to 2015. Gravity models for exports and imports were estimated to identify the factors influencing...

African countries are negotiating the African Continental Free Trade Area with the aim to spearhead global value chain (GVC) trade among African countries as a driver for robust economic growth. This paper evaluates the participation of Sub-Saharan African Regional Economic Communities (RECs) in GVC-related...

African countries have over the years experienced persistent current account deficits. The role of asymmetries in explaining the response of trade balance to exchange rate movement has not received adequate attention as linear models dominate extant empirical literature. In this paper, we examined the...

This paper examines the impact of the antidumping measures initiated by the Government of Egypt on imports during the period 2001–2015. Our contribution is twofold. First, the paper distinguishes between the effect of antidumping measures on the value, the volume and the price of imports. Second, it...

To become operational, the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) must harmonize Rules of Origin (ROO) across Africa’s Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) along two dimensions: regime-wide rules and product-specific rules. This paper describes and evaluates these ROO across the major multiple-membership...

This paper uses panel data of 42 sub-Saharan Africa countries from 2005 to 2015 to examine the effect of aid for trade (AfT) on export diversification. The average Hirschman-Herfindahl index measure of 0.77 indicates that the export basket of sub-Saharan African countries is very narrow. This is further...

Rules of origin are used to determine a product’s eligibility for preferential tariffs under a free trade agreement and have major implications for the extent of trade under the agreement and the growth of regional value chains. Firms choose to comply with rules of origin when the benefits of trading...

This study uses Comtrade trade data covering 1990–2017, 14 textile subsectors, and 53 African countries with their main trade partners to evaluate Chinese trade impacts on African textile exports over three subperiods at the sector level. It finds that, although textile imports from China had a significant...

This study investigates the causal links among agricultural imports, agriculture productivity, and economic growth in 40 sub-Saharan African countries over the period 1990–2015. Granger causality tests are applied to infer direction of causality, and the generalized two-stage least squares instrumental...

Market integration is often associated with economic growth spillovers, to the extent that strengthened trade linkages would make economic growth in one country an opportunity for growth to its partners. This paper uses a spatial dynamic panel data approach to analyze the extent to which Africa and its...

To drive economic development, it is important for policy makers to have a good understanding of the linkages between imports, exports, and the rest of the economy. This is particularly true for Africa. The continent depends on exports of commodities to finance imports of manufactured goods for consumption...