Infrastructure, trade facilitation, and network connectivity in Sub-Saharan Africa☆,☆☆

The Effects of Trade Facilitation on Trade Performance in Africa

“…The surest way of taking advantage of these opportunities is through effective trade facilitation. This is crucial because, as noted by Hartzenberg (2011) and Shepherd (2016), trade facilitation enhances network connectivity and remains central to boost Africa's trade both inter-regionally and globally.…”

“…Ineffective trade facilitation factors, such as undue customs delays and poor administration, insufficient/inefficient transport and telecommunication system, too many documentations and bureaucratic procedural activities, inadequate coordination between government agencies and corruption (see, e.g., Djankov et al, 2006;Buyonge and Kireeva, 2008;UNCTAD, 2008;Teravaninthorn and Raballand, 2009;Portugal-Perez and Wilson, 2012;UNECA, 2013;Shepherd, 2016;Sakyi et al, 2018), are major possible causes of Africa's inability to fully reap the trade opportunities that globalization presents, making Africa notably a very high cost trading zone. Despite these factors contributing to the region's poor trade performance, the World Bank (2006) had also blamed this outcome on poor design and execution of trade policies.…”

The Effects of AfCFTA on Food Security Sustainability: An Analysis of the Cereals Trade in the SADC Region

“…The majority of Africa's trade have been skewed towards the European and American regions. It is only recently that some African countries such as Tanzania, Kenya, Zambia and Zimbabwe are slowly shifting much of their trade towards Asian and Middle Eastern countries, especially with China, Russia, Japan and India, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates [3,8,15,18,19]. Consequently, Africa's intra trade statistics lag behind compared to other continents and economic regions.…”

“…While there are some regions which are obtaining surpluses in agricultural food production, Africa has poor distribution channels largely due to poor transport infrastructure (air, road, rail, sea), inefficient institutions which promote redistribution and trade facilitation, as well as information asymmetry. Taking into account the fact that the geopolitical space of Africa is larger than its European and Asian counterparts, poor infrastructure, high tariff and non-tariff barriers and weak trade facilitation procedures only add to the production and transaction costs of an already poor continent [7,8].…”

Global infrastructure gap: theory and realities of Ukrainian agribusiness

“…Незважаючи на деяке покращення конкурентних позицій України у 2007-2018 рр. 53 , він залишається на низькому рівні, майже удвічі поступаючись лідеру -Німеччині (4,20 у 2018 р.) 54 .…”