Trade facilitation and Africa's manufactured goods' export: a panel data analysis

This paper examines how issues of trade facilitation continue to discourage the export of manufactured goods from Africa. Pooled, cross-country, annual time series data for the period 1995 – 2004 for 20 African countries were used to examine nature of the relationship between some selected indicators of trade facilitation—Corruption perception index, roads network, number of start-up procedures for register a business, taxes on exports—and export of manufactured goods. Our conclusions are that policy-regime improvements and conscious efforts at removing all forms of constraints to the free flow of goods could have a significant impact on goods exports from Africa. Our recommendations are that governments in the different African countries will need to focus on ways of achieving acceptable standards and best practices in terms of facilitating trade expansion. Reform policies have to be targeted at these indicators so as to be more engaged in the global value chain.