ECIPE/World Bank Seminar: De-fragmenting African Trade
With African leaders now calling for a continental free trade area by 2017, to boost trade within the continent, a new World Bank report shows how African countries are losing out on billions of dollars in potential trade earnings every year because of high trade barriers with neighboring countries, and that it is easier for Africa to trade with the rest of the world than with itself.
Existing regional fragmentation deprives the continent of new sources of economic growth, new jobs, and sharply falling poverty, factors which accompanied significant trade integration in East Asia and other regions. The cross-border production networks that have spurred economic dynamism in other regions, especially East Asia, have yet to materialize in Africa.
ECIPE and the World Bank invite you to a presentation of the report by Paul Brenton, World Bank Trade Practice Leader for Africa and editor of ‘De-Fragmenting Africa’, with comments by Jim Kolbe, Former Member of US Congress and Senior Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund, Roelof Plijter, Adviser at the European Commission on trade, development and EPAs, and Fredrik Erixon, Director at ECIPE.
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