Market Access for African Agricultural Exports: Assessment of the AoA and SPS Agreements

Abstract:     
Agriculture plays a critical role in the majority of African Countries’ economy. The sector is not only a major employer but also a significant source of export earnings and hence it has a high multiplier effect. This very fact makes agricultural market access issues of major concern to African countries.

This paper aimed at assessing the agricultural market access challenges of African countries through reviewing pertinent literature, WTO Agreements on agriculture (AOA) and the Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) measures and recent developments at the Doha round of trade negotiations.

While through the adoption of the AoA, WTO members have brought agricultural trade to a new phase of remarkable reform, African agricultural exports still face significant challenges (both tariff and non-tariff). Particularly, African small holder farmers’ exports hardly penetrate into major export markets due to ever increasing complex nature of SPS measures administered by those markets although a number of preferential market access regimes are available to them. It also appears that the Doha round, on the basis of the different modalities in motion, offers little to most of African countries, leaving “aid for trade” as an important supplementary policy for the round to be pro-development, as it purports to be.

Presented at the SIEL 2010 Conference in Barcelona.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 42

Keywords: Africa, Agreement on Agriculture, Agricultural Trade, Market Access, Sanitary and Phyto Sanitary Measures, World Trade Organization

JEL Classification: F02, F10, F13, F14, Q17

working papers series