Global trade and investment has expanded over the past several decades. In sub-Saharan Africa, however, a region hampered by political instability and governance problems, lack of foreign investment, and other barriers, the opposite has occurred.

Africa’s share of world exports has dropped by nearly two-thirds in three decades from 2.9 percent in 1976 to 0.9 percent in 2006. If Africa’s share of world exports had kept at the same level as during the 1970s its export revenue would be approximately 10 times larger than its current value.

Moreover, while other regions have increased their share of non-oil exports over the last two decades, petroleum continues to dominate exports from sub-Saharan Africa.

“Unless African countries expand their participation in international trade, future progress in terms of growth and poverty reduction will continue to be hampered,” said John S. Wilson, a Lead Economist in the Development Research Group at the World Bank.
At a May 31, 2008 workshop in Entebbe, Uganda, organized by the World Bank’s Development Research Group and the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC), an event supported by the UK’s Department for International Development and a Trust Fund project on Trade Costs and Facilitation, over 100 participants from across Africa, Europe, and the U.S. discussed issues related to Africa’s future trade expansion. The specific role of lowering trade costs to expand trade and reduce poverty was reviewed.

After opening remarks by William Lyakurwa, Executive Director of the AERC, and Olu Ajakaiye, Research Director of the AERC, participants discussed key difficulties contributing to high trade costs in the region, including weak infrastructure, geographical constraints, and other barriers to progress.

The high cost of trade is a major obstacle

High trade costs for transporting goods and getting them across borders have a negative impact on prospects for expanding African trade, making producers less competitive.

While reducing tariffs and other trade barriers remains important, and must continue as part of the liberalization process, many African countries will not be able to benefit from reform unless trade costs are reduced, as noted in a workshop paper by Alberto Portugal-Perez and John S. Wilson of the Bank.

Bottlenecks in the form of regulatory and administrative constraints to transport and transit must also be reduced. Customs procedures, duty drawback schemes, and other requirements push up the cost of trade. The World Bank’s Doing Business Indicators reveal that the number of days needed to complete import and export procedures in African countries are among the highest in the world.

Improving the trade-related business climate is a measure that will attract firms into the export market and boost industrial productivity, as argued by Lawrence Edwards, a Professor at the University of Cape Town.

Another speaker at the workshop, Tendie Mugadza, from the University of Cape Town, noted that African trade flows could increase substantially if African countries were to improve trade-related capacity building indicators along three dimensions: institutions, infrastructure and human capital.

Exports matter for poverty reduction

The fact that high trade costs prevent the full realization of potential gains from trade and can wither the poverty reduction effect of export opportunities, such as high world prices for major export crops or minerals, was noted in a presentation and paper by Guido Porto, an economist in the Bank’s Development Research Group.

Recent research by Porto shows that exports matter for poverty reduction. Those farmers who are able to grow high-yield export crops are, on average, less poor than those who engage in subsistence farming. In a related work, Balat, Brambilla, and Porto(2008) found that households producing export crops, such as coffee, tea, cotton, and fruits in Uganda are less likely to be poor than those not involved in export markets. They find that doubling export participation would reduce poverty by 13 percent.

Examples of measures that can be put in place by the right policies include roads, marketing information, foreign direct investment, and schemes for growers, ccompanied by improved access to foreign markets.

Infrastructure also matters to trade costs in Africa

The workshop also addressed infrastructure and its impact on trade in Africa. Africa is home to fifteen landlocked countries that do not have direct access to ports.

Although Baltimore, a major US port, is about the same distance from Mbabane, the capital of landlocked Swaziland, as from Durban, a South African port, shipping costs of a standardized 40-foot container from Baltimore to inland Mbabane are five times higher than those to Durban.

To overcome the high cost of inland transportation, improvements are needed in two key areas: physical infrastructure (providing the costs are likely to yield significant benefits) and administrative practices and political stability in these countries.

A Trans-African Highway Network?

Research by Buys, Deichmann and Wheeler shows that there will be strong trade benefits from investing in and maintaining a trans-African highway network. Their proposed network links 83 major cities and covers a length of about 100,000 km, and could expand trade by $250 billion over 15 years.

 Andreas Kopp, a Lead Transport Economist at the Bank, noted the importance of infrastructure maintenance and that underfunding of maintenance in sub-Saharan Africa between 1970 and 1989 led to an estimated loss of $45 bn. in road asset value. He argued that this loss could have been avoided by spending $12 bn in maintenance.