Working Paper 77 - Enhancing Africa’s Trade: From Marginalization to an Export - Led Approach to Development

This paper reviews Africa’s role in the global trading system and discusses theconstraints and options for Africa to move from its current marginalization to an exportledapproach to economic development. It discusses the impact of regional economicintegration on intra-African trade, reviews the WTO regime, analyses the internal andexternal constraints to African trade, including the controversy over Western agriculturalsubsidies and tariff and non-tariff barriers to African trade in Western markets. It thendiscusses new approaches to trade development in Africa with special emphasis on therole of export processing zones and concludes that there is urgent need for Africa todiversify its exports through a systematic structural transformation.