Background

The narrative of a ‘rising’ Africa is now widelyrecognised. It has replaced the discourse of ‘thehopeless continent’, which adorned the front coverof The Economist just over a decade ago. Africa’seconomic fortunes have become more hopeful asthe global trade architecture has changeddramatically in the new millennium.

What are the main changes in the global tradingarchitecture over the past 15 years? How havethese changes impacted on Africa’s economicdevelopment and the nature of trading relationsbetween Africa and its traditional developed countrypartners, the European Union, the UK and the USA,and its main developing country partner, China?What are the implications of 'Brexit' - the UK'sdeparture from the European Union - for Africa'strade? And how has the changing narrative of tradeand trade integration impacted on Africa’s ownstrategy to integrate its market? This issue ofCommonwealth Trade Hot Topics explores thesequestions and offers some policy recommendationsfor African policy-makers and trade negotiators.

The changing architecture of world trade

China’s accession to the World Trade Organization(WTO) at the launch of the Doha Development

Round in November 2001 helped to catapult Chinainto the pinnacle of global trade within a decade,and transform the existing patterns ofNorth–South trade that emerged after the SecondWorld War. China’s high growth rates – of over 10per cent per annum – created the demand forAfrica’s commodities, leading to improved growthprospects for many Sub-Saharan African countriesfollowing at least two lost decades ofdevelopment. In the first decade of the newmillennium African economies grew at anunprecedented average rate of over 5 per cent perannum, although this growth was not alwaysinclusive and sustainable, or lead to Africa’sstructural economic transformation. China’s ‘rise’,and that of other emerging developing countriesthat became known as the BRICS (Brazil, Russia,India, China, and South Africa), has changed thenature and direction of world trade through greaterSouth-South trade and investment in the firstdecade of the new millennium.

These changes in the world trading system in justover a decade have been dramatic. The followingselected trade statistics illustrate these changes.China overtook Japan as the leading Asianexporter in 2004. China was to then overtake theUSA in 2007 and Germany in 2009 to become the

The Changing Global TradeArchitecture: Implications for Sub-Saharan Africa’s Development Faizel Ismail*

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* Faizel Ismail is Adjunct Professor in the School of Economics, University of Cape Town. He previously served as South Africa’sAmbassador to the WTO (2010–2014). The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily representthose of the Commonwealth Secretariat. The author acknowledges the useful comments of Brendan Vickers, CommonwealthSecretariat, and an anonymous external reviewer.

world’s largest exporter. According to the WTO,the share of developing country exports in worldtrade grew, from 26 per cent in 1995 to 44 per centin 2014, while the share of developed economies’exports in world trade declined, from 70 per cent to52 per cent, during the same period. The UnitedNations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA)furthermore notes that Africa’s share of worldexports had also grown, albeit very modestly, from3 per cent in 1990 to 3.3 per cent in 2010 but fellback to 3 per cent in 2014. While Africa’seconomies have been growing at unprecedentedrates, this has been from a concentrated exportstructure and significant de-industrialisation forsome countries, while poverty, inequality andunemployment, especially for the youth, are stillkey challenges today. While the African growthstory is still positive and hopeful, it should betreated with some caution and considerabledegree of nuance.

Developing countries, led by China, have madesignificant progress in world trade during the past15 years of the new millennium. These changeswere to impact significantly on the WTO DohaRound of trade negotiations. These changes arenow discussed below together with the role ofAfrican countries in the multilateral trading system.

The collapse of the Doha Round

The new millennium ushered in the most dramaticdevelopments in world trade since the SecondWorld War. These changes became one of the mainreasons for the collapse of the WTO Doha Roundministerial meeting, held in Geneva, in 2008. TheDoha Round has not succeeded in emerging fromthis crisis notwithstanding efforts made to secureincremental outcomes at the 9th WTO MinisterialConference, held in Bali, Indonesia (December2013) and the recent 10th WTO MinisterialConference held in Nairobi, Kenya (December2015). The main argument of the major developedcountry members of the WTO, led by the USA, isthat the Doha Round is now obsolete given the newrealities in the world economy, especially the riseof China and other emerging economies. Inaddition, it is argued by some writers that thedominant role of ‘global value chains’ in world traderequires ‘new approaches’ and ‘new pathways’,including plurilateral negotiations on a range ofissues, including investment or services(Hoekman, 2014; World Bank, 2015).

The so-called ‘new pathways’ preferred by theUSA, in the WTO, is essentially an abandonment of

the single-undertaking approach (that requires allissues to be agreed together) towards single-issueapproaches (such as that on Trade Facilitationadopted in Bali). In addition, this approach signals ashift from multilateral approaches towardsplurilateral approaches, such as the negotiationson Services (TISA) and on Environmental Goodsand Services in the WTO (Ismail, 2012a and 2012b).This ‘new narrative’ has become the mainstreamparadigm on trade influencing the ‘epistemiccommunity’ of researchers and policy thinkers inthe WTO, OECD, and the World Bank, in much thesame way as the ‘Washington Consensus’ was tobecome in the late 1980s and 1990s.

The collapse of the Doha Round of tradenegotiations in 2008 saw a simultaneous shift ofthe USA towards mega-regional and mega-bilateral approaches to trade negotiations. TheUSA prioritised the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)and the Transatlantic Trade and InvestmentPartnership (TTIP) negotiations and shifted itsnegotiating resources towards a push for higherregulatory standards and disciplines on a range oftrade related issues that it believed were moreimportant in driving the interests of its lead firms inglobal value chains. The US approach to the WTOnegotiations is to use its mega-regionals andmega-bilaterals as part of its efforts to redesignthe negotiating agenda on global rule-making tocounter the growing competition it faces fromChina and other emerging developing countries(Braz, 2012).

Africa had played an extraordinary role in the DohaRound since the collapse of the WTO Cancunministerial meeting in September 2003, where fiveof its members (South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt,United Republic of Tanzania, and Zimbabwe) joinedthe G20 group of developing countries onAgriculture. The African group was a powerfulplayer in the WTO negotiations, as part of theAfrican, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States(ACP), and in alliance with the LDC (least developedcountry) group (in which it has a majority ofmembers). The four African countries in the so-called Cotton 4 group were also successful inraising the profile of their concerns in thenegotiations. Africa had begun to influence manyof the outcomes of the negotiations in the WTO,including on TRIPS and Public Health, Cotton,LDCs, SVEs, etc. (See Ismail, 2009; 2011.)

However, the collapse of the Doha Round and theshift away from the single undertaking towards

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single issues by the USA has fragmented the Africagroup in the WTO and excluded it from theplurilateral negotiations, where it is regarded as asmall and insignificant player. It is partly for thisreason that the Africa group was unable to makesignificant gains in both the Bali and Nairobiministerial meetings. Some observers were thus toargue that the outcomes of both the Bali andNairobi WTO ministerial meetings wereimbalanced and asymmetrical, and against theinterests of developing countries, and the Africagroup, in particular (Hannah, Scott and Wilkinson,2016; Kanth, 2016).

In the post-Nairobi period the Africa group, in theWTO, will have to maintain and strengthen itsapproach of unity and solidarity in the WTOnegotiations and develop its own strategy forengagement in the changed circumstances of theWTO negotiations. The dramatic changes in theglobal economy in the new millennium were toalso impact on the traditional relationshipsbetween Africa and its main trading partners –such as the EU. The changing global tradearchitecture and EU–Africa trade relations arenow discussed below.

Africa’s Economic Partnership Agreements(EPAs)

The dramatic changes in the European Union, sincethe fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War,increased the membership of the EU, from EU-15 toEU-28. Most of the EU-13 countries do not share theburden of responsibility for the colonial relationsbetween Europe and Africa, and thus have not hadthe same enthusiasm for the EU–Africa or EU–ACPrelationship that was defined by trade preferencesand development assistance since the LoméConvention in 1975. The Lomé Convention wastransformed into the Cotonou Agreement in 2000.These changes in the composition of the EU began adebate for the radical transformation of thetraditional trade and aid relationship between the EUand Africa from one of unilateral preferencestowards one of reciprocity. The fact that theCotonou Agreement required a waiver in the WTO toextend the Cotonou preferential trade arrangementwith the ACP was arguably of much less importancethan that of the change in the composition andattitude of the new members to the ACP. The EUthus began a process of ‘negotiating’ Africancountries out of the Cotonou Agreement towardsreciprocal Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs)on 27 November 2002.

African countries thus have a challenging task toevaluate the implications of the EPAs for theirregional integration processes. African countrieswill need to ensure that they do not open theirmarkets to EU member states before they opentheir markets to their neighbours in Africa. TheEPAs do not correspond to the same regionalconfigurations that African countries have beenmoving towards. A range of challenges thus arisefor African economies, including: the different paceof goods liberalisation, both in terms of productsand phase down periods; the different rules oforigin that may complicate regional integration;and the different rules that may create differenceson policy issues, such as export taxes. Africa willhave to evaluate how to unravel the complicationsthat have been created by these EPAs and how toensure that they do not allow these agreements tobecome stumbling blocks, but instead use theEPAs as building blocks to advance Africa’s regionalintegration agenda (Davies, 2014).

The prospect of Brexit will also have implicationsfor the EPAs and the UK's future tradingarrangements with Africa. The Brexit shock willimpact on Africa through various channels: trade,FDI, official development assistance (ODA),remittances and tourism. For example, Sub-Saharan African countries have almost doubledtheir merchandise exports to the UK over the pastfifteen years, from US$8 billion in 2000 to aboutUS$16 billion in 2014. In 2014, the UK’s ODA todeveloping countries amounted to about £12billion, much of which went to Africa. It is importantthat Brexit does not disrupt current trade or aid tothe world's poorest continent.

African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA)

The USA had been following the EU negotiationswith the ACP countries with a great deal of interestas it began its own process of reviewing its tradearrangements with Africa, specifically the AfricanGrowth and Opportunity Act (AGOA-III) that wasset to expire in September 2015. Originallyenacted in 2000, AGOA grants qualifying Sub-Saharan African countries unilateral tradepreferences for over 6,400 tariff lines. Thisprogramme has now been renewed three timeswith the latest renewal (AGOA-IV) signed byPresident Obama in June 2015.

Learning from the EU, the USA introduced a slew ofprovisions in the new AGOA Extension andEnhancement Act of 2015 that demand reciprocityfrom AGOA beneficiaries, including on specific Is

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trade and investment related policy issuesrequired by its lobbies. In addition, the USadministration is required to actively encourageAfrican countries to engage in a dialogue with theUS Trade Representative with a view totransforming the existing one-way preferentialtrade system enjoyed by AGOA beneficiaries into atwo-way reciprocal free trade agreement.

It is also most likely that the template for thereciprocal free trade agreements will come fromthe recently concluded TPP negotiations wherethe USA has already agreed on a slew of tradeissues including tariffs, trade rules and regulations,which go well beyond that covered orcontemplated in the WTO Doha Round. In addition,the current debate in the US Congress over theTPP and TTIP, if successful, will lead to more thantwo-thirds of world trade being captured in thesenew trading blocs and the consequent erosion ofpreferential access into the US market for currentmajor beneficiaries of AGOA, such as South Africa,and other Sub-Saharan African countries.

The implications of the new AGOA Extension andEnhancement Act of 2015, and the impact of theUS led mega-regional (TPP) and mega-bilateral(TTIP) is that the 10-year extension of AGOAbenefits may not be assured over this period,unless African countries acting together persuadethe US Congress to maintain AGOA-IV until itscurrent expiry date of 2025. Thus current exportbeneficiaries of AGOA should be cautious aboutmaking long-term investment plans. Africancountries will need to intensify their lobbying inthe US Congress to make AGOA moredevelopment friendly and supportive of Africanregional integration.

China’s rise: opportunities and challenges

China’s trade and economic relationship hasevolved considerably since the founding of thePeople’s Republic of China in 1949. In 1964 Chinaprovided 53 per cent of the loans received by Africaand in the 1970s it financed the Tazara Railway linefrom Zambia’s copper belt to the port of Dar esSalaam in Tanzania (Brautigam, 2009). However,since the formation of the Forum on China–AfricaCooperation (FOCAC), in 2000, this relationshiphas expanded rapidly. By 2009 China overtook theUSA to become Africa’s largest trading partner(Schneidman, 2015). In 2010 China became Africa’slargest export destination. In sharp contrast boththe EU, which remains the main destination forAfrica’s exports, and the USA have declined as an

export destination for Africa. In 2005, 52 per centof Africa’s exports went to Europe. Thispercentage was reduced to 36 per cent in 2014,while over 27 per cent of Africa’s exports went toAsia in 2014 (mainly China). Similarly, only about 7per cent of Africa’s total exports went to NorthAmerica in 2014. Pigman (2016) reports that totalgoods trade between the USA and Africa hadreached a peak of US$100 billion in 2008, and wasvalued at US$50 billion in 2014. In sharp contrasttwo-way trade between China and Africa wasvalued at US$210 billion in 2013, but had fallen toUS$152 billion in 2014 (with Asia) (Schneidman,2015; WTO, 2015).

FOCAC has met every three years at ministerialand presidential levels and made a large number ofcommitments to enhance its support to Africa in anumber of areas, including: opening its market upto 95 per cent for LDCs; the provision ofconcessional loans and grants; support forinfrastructure; and generous debt relief (UNCTAD,2010). At the 6th FOCAC, held in Johannesburg, on4-5 December 2015, China’s President Xi Jinpingannounced a big package that covers the areas ofindustrialisation, agricultural modernisation,infrastructure, financial services, greendevelopment, trade and investment facilitation,poverty reduction and public welfare, public health,people-to-people exchanges, and peace andsecurity. The package included US$60 billion offunding support (Xinhua News, 2015).

China’s rise has created both opportunities andchallenges for African countries. For example, thedramatic changes in China’s rise created hugeopportunities for Africa to export its commoditiesat higher prices into the Chinese market, propellingits growth rates. However, China’s rise has alsocreated the challenge for Africa to manage theimpact of the increasing competitiveness ofChina’s labour intensive manufactured productson its own nascent labour intensive manufacturingsectors, such as clothing and textiles, leather andfootwear, electronics, and furniture (Ismail, 2011).In the first decade of China’s entry into the WTO,African countries were increasingly under siege asChina’s exports of manufactures caused manyfactory closures and de-industrialisation of severalAfrican countries. Interestingly, as China’s ownwage levels have begun to rise they have begun tosub-contract out the labour intensive parts ofproduction to lower wage regions, mainly in Southand South-East Asia. More recently, Africancountries, such as Ethiopia, have begun to tap intoIs

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this opportunity, and have succeeded in attractingChinese investors to build industrial capacity andmanufacture in the low value sectors of clothingand textiles, electronics and footwear (World Bank,2013). In addition, unlike the private sectorinvestors in the USA and the EU, the Chinesestate-owned enterprises (SOEs) have taken alonger view of their investments in Africa and havebegun to invest in infrastructure, such as energy,road and rail transport, port development andlogistics. The African Development Bank is correctthat Africa will need to leverage its abundantnatural resources, and the growing size of itsmiddle class that has made it an attractiveconsumer market, to negotiate a more mutuallybeneficial relationship with China.

Competing approaches on African economicintegration

While Africa has made considerable progress inbuilding an ambitious programme of action tointegrate the continent in the past few years, thereremain competing paradigms for African economicintegration, which have diverted Africa’s attentionfrom its development integration path. It is for thisreason that it is important to revisit the debate andset out clearly the path that Africa will need totravel to succeed in its objective of developmentintegration. Two main approaches to regionalintegration are discussed: linear integration andopen-regionalism supported by the World Bank,and ‘development integration’ advocated byUNCTAD, the UNECA and other writers.

A recent World Bank (2015) study uses the globalvalue chain (GVC) narrative as its analyticalframework and argues that while Africa has madesignificant progress in increasing growth, the mainstrategy to advance poverty reduction should beto: increase its role in GVCs by focusing on theproduction of intermediate goods; liberalise itstariff regime, not only to its African neighbours butalso to all other third countries; and focus ondeveloping a Services Hub in Southern Africa. Thereport argues that African countries should notonly be opening their markets to their neighboursin Africa, but also opening their markets to allother countries as well in a so-called ‘open-regionalism’ approach.

This approach to development policy is similar tothe structural adjustment policies (SAPs)advocated by the World Bank in the 1980s and the1990s. The SAPs required countries to liberalisetrade, deregulate their financial markets, privatise

SOEs, and reduce social expenditure. Morerecently, the World Bank has admitted that theSAPs had gone too far, resulting in de-industrialisation in a number of African countries.This approach to regional integration has longbeen critiqued by several studies (Davies, 1996;UNCTAD, TDR 2006 and TDR 2013). As analternative these writers have called for a‘development integration’ approach that stressedthe need for ‘macro and micro co-ordination in amulti-sectoral programme embracing production,infrastructure and trade’ (Davies, 1996). Inaddition, Davies argued that, to ensure a moreequitable balance of the benefits of regionalintegration, trade integration would need to becomplemented by regional industrial developmentto compensate the least developed countries in aregional integration project. This approach toregional integration has gained increasing support.UNCTAD, in its 2013 report, argued that Africancountries should adopt an approach to regionalintegration referred to as ‘developmentalregionalism’ (UNCTAD, TDR 2013). More recently,the UNECA argued that ‘trade policy whichexposes infant industries to competition can leadto de-industrialisation’. The UNECA reportemphasises the need for trade to serve as aninstrument of accelerated industrialisation andstructural transformation in Africa, rather than anend in itself.

African countries have made considerableprogress in increasing intra-regional trade, risingfrom a mere 10 per cent in 1995 to 18 per cent in2014 (WTO, 2015). This increase is still lowcompared to other regions. Intra-regional tradeaccounts for 70 per cent of the EU’s total trade.For North America, intra-regional trade accountedfor 50 per cent of its exports, and in Asia 52 percent of its exports was within Asia in 2014 (WTO,2015). African countries have been trying tointegrate since the 1980 Lagos Plan of Action.While some regions in Africa have been makingsignificant progress in developing their regionalintegration processes within the so-calledRegional Economic Communities – namely, SADC,EAC, COMESA, ECCAS, ECOWAS, IGAD, UMA, and CEN-SAD – they have tended to follow political impulses rather than economicimperatives and created a complex set ofoverlapping regional configurations – resulting in aso-called spaghetti bowl of integration.

It is for this reason that African leaders decided tointervene to bring some consistency, integrity and

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seriousness of purpose to the African integrationagenda. On 12 June 2011, the Heads of State andGovernment of SADC, COMESA and the EACconvened at a Tripartite Summit in Sandton,Johannesburg, to discuss the need for a ‘grand freetrade area’ between the regional communities(Davies, 2011). An Action Plan on Boosting Intra-African Trade (BIAT) was adopted by the AfricanUnion Summit in January 2012. The plan is aimed atincreasing intra-African trade and addressing anumber of tariff and non-tariff issues, including:trade facilitation, trade policy, productive capacity,trade related infrastructure, trade finance, tradeinformation and factor market integration (AfricanUnion, 2012).

The Tripartite Free Trade Area (T-FTA) waslaunched on 10 June 2015. The T-FTA will form thebasis for an Africa-wide FTA initiative that has threepillars: market access, cross-border infrastructureand regional industrial development. In parallel withthe process of the T-FTA negotiations, the AfricanUnion Assembly launched the Continental FreeTrade Area (C-FTA) negotiations during the 25thOrdinary Summit of Heads of States andGovernments on 15 June 2015 in Johannesburg.The benefits of the C-FTA include access to a largermarket of more than one billion people and acombined GDP of over US$2 trillion.

In order to achieve the African Union’s vision of ‘anintegrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa, drivenby its own citizens and representing a dynamicforce in the global arena’, the AU Summit inJanuary 2015 adopted Agenda 2063. Agenda 2063sets out the priority areas for Africa’s developmentover the next 50 years and calls specifically for a 50per cent increase in intra-African trade by 2022.The post-2015 development agenda adopted bythe United Nations aims at achieving, by 2030, a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)encompassing social, economic andenvironmental dimensions. Regional integration ofthe African continent is essential for both theimplementation of the AU’s own goals captured inAgenda 2063 and the UN SDGs. Africannegotiators will need to ensure that their approachto regional integration draws on the developmentintegration approach discussed above and isapplied pragmatically to advance the economicdevelopment of the African continent. The EUmodel has informed African integration. It isimportant to draw lessons from Brexit, especiallyensuring inclusive regional integration andbalancing the costs and benefits of integration.

Building the capacity of African trade negotiatorsto advance the multiplicity of regional, bilateral andmultilateral negotiations at the same time isessential. African countries will also need toanticipate the effects of TPP and TTIP.

Concluding remarks

The past decade and a half of the new millenniumhas ushered in dramatic changes to the architectureof world trade, creating both opportunities andchallenges for Africa’s development. Africa itselfneeds to adapt to these changes and articulate itsown vision and strategy to integrate the continent,for example Agenda 2063. A successful integrationagenda will require simultaneous and co-ordinatedefforts to open its markets to its African neighbours,build its industrial capacity and invest in cross-border infrastructure. Towards this end, Africancountries will need to develop innovative trade andinvestment partnerships, while preserving theirpolicy space to support industrial development, withtheir main external trading partners, both thetraditional partners, such as the EU, the UK and theUSA, and the emerging countries in the South, suchas China. Important is how African countries canleverage these partnerships to help move upregional and global value chains. Given Brexit,African countries should not wait on the sidelines,but engage constructively about their present and future relationship with the UK (and the EU), and how to ensure that the economic falloutdoes not derail their own regional and globalintegration and development plans. Africancountries should also insist on multilateralapproaches in the WTO that ensure theirparticipation in the negotiations, by leveraging theircollective strength and building effective allianceswith other developing country groups.

References

African Union (2012). ‘Declaration on BoostingIntra-African Trade and the Establishment of aContinental Free Trade Area (CFTA)’,Assembly/AU/Decl.(XVIII). See alsohttp://www.au.int/en/ti/biat/about#sthash.YaucHENg.dpuf.

Brautigam, D (2009). The Dragon’s Gift. The RealStory of China in Africa. Oxford University Press,United Kingdom and New York.

Braz, B (2012). ‘Running into a Brick Wall: the WTODoha Round, Governance Gaps and GeopoliticalRisks’. Global Policy, 3(1), February.

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Davies, R (1996). ‘Promoting Regional Integrationin Southern Africa: An Analysis of Prospects andProblems from a South African Perspective’.African Security Review, Vol. 5 No. 5, 1996.

Davies, R (2011). ‘Cape to Cairo: Towards a freetrade area’. Interview with Ben Turok. New Agenda,end quarter 2011.

Davies, R (2014). ‘The SADC EPA and Beyond’, inECDPM’s Great Insights, Economic PartnershipAgreements and Beyond, Vol. 3 Issue 9, Oct/Nov2014.

Hannah, E, Scott, J and Wilkinson, R (2016). ‘TheWTO in Nairobi. The Demise of the DohaDevelopment Agenda and the future of themultilateral trading system’ (forthcoming in Journalof Global Policy).

Hoekman, B (2014). ‘Supply Chains, Mega-Regionals and Multilateralism: A Road Map for theWTO’. European University Institute WorkingPapers. RSCAS 2014/27 Robert Schuman Centrefor Advanced Studies. Global GovernanceProgramme-88.

Ismail, F (2012a). ‘Narratives and Myths in the WTODoha Round. The Way Forward?’ Economic andPolitical Weekly, 4 August 2012, Vol. XLVII No. 31.

Ismail, F (2012b). ‘Is the Doha Round Dead? What isthe Way Forward?’ World Economics, Vol. 13 No. 3,July–September 2012.

Ismail, F (2011). ‘China’s Rise – Opportunities andChallenges for Africa’, in Melendez-Ortiz, R,Bellman, C and Cheng, S (eds) A Decade in the WTO.Implications for China and Global Trade Governance.International Centre for Trade and SustainableDevelopment, Geneva, Switzerland, 2011, e-book.

Ismail, F (2009). Reforming the World TradeOrganization. Developing Countries in the DohaRound. CUTS International and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/bueros/genf/06877.pdf

Ismail, F (2007). Mainstreaming Development in theWTO. Developing Countries in the Doha Round.CUTS International and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/bueros/genf/04888.pdf

Kanth, R (2016). ‘What happened at Nairobi andWhy. Dismantling of Doha Development Agendaand India’s Role’. Economic and Political Weekly, 12March 2016, Vol. LI No. 11.

Pigman, G A (2016). ‘AGOA-IV and the TradeProspects of Sub-Saharan Africa’. CommonwealthTrade Hot Topics, Issue 127, March 2016.http://www.thecommonwealth-ilibrary.org/commonwealth/imprints/2016

Schneidman, W (2015). ‘2015: A Pivotal Year forObama’s Africa Legacy’. The Brookings Institution.Africa Growth Initiative.

UNCTAD (2015). Trade and Development Report.2015. United Nations, Geneva.

UNCTAD (2013). Trade and Development Report.2013. United Nations, Geneva.

UNCTAD (2006). Trade and Development Report.2006. United Nations, Geneva.

UNCTAD (2010). ‘Economic Development inAfrica. South–South cooperation: Africa and thenew forms of economic partnerships’. Trade andDevelopment Board, 6 July 2010.http://unctad.org/en/Docs/tdb57d2_en.pdf

World Bank (2015). ‘Factory Southern Africa?SACU in Global Value Chains’. Summary Report.November 2015. World Bank Group.

World Bank (2013). ‘Africa’s Pulse. An analysis ofissues shaping Africa’s economic future’. TheWorld Bank Africa Office. October 2013.

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Xinhua News (2015). ‘Xi announces 10 major China-Africa cooperation plans for coming 3 years’. 4December 2015.http://www.focac.org/eng/ltda/dwjbzjjhys_1/t1322068.htm

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Previous Ten Issues of theCommonwealth Trade HotTopics Series

Issue 130: Trade Implications of Climate Policyafter the Paris Outcome

Issue 129: The Paris Climate Agreement: WhatImplications for Trade?

Issue 128: Trade and the SDGs: Making ‘Means ofImplementation’ a Reality

Issue 127: AGOA-IV and the Trade Prospects ofSub-Saharan Africa

Issue 126: International Trade in the HealthSector: Forgotten Frontier?

Issue 125: Participation of Small Economies inGlobal Value Chains: Evidence andPolicy Issues

Issue 124: Non-Tariff Measures and the WTO:Considerations for CommonwealthDeveloping Countries

Issue 123: Mobile Technology and Trade in Sub-Saharan Africa

Issue 122: Priorities for Small and VulnerableEconomies in the WTO: Nairobi andBeyond

Issue 121: Implementing the Economic PartnershipAgreements (EPAs): What Lessons fromCARIFORUM?

Trade HotTopicsISSN: 2071-8527 (print) ISSN: 2071-9914 (online)

Commonwealth Trade Hot Topics is a peer-reviewedpublication which provides concise and informative analyses on trade and related issues, prepared both byCommonwealth Secretariat and international experts.

Series editor: Dr Mohammad A Razzaque

Produced by Trade Division of the CommonwealthSecretariat

For further information or to contribute to the Series,please email m.razzaque@commonwealth.int