Trade policies and agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa Comparative analysis in a Computable General Equilibrium framework[Politiques commerciales et agriculture en Afrique Sub-Saharienne : analyse comparative en Equilibre Général Calculable]

This dissertation aims at contributing to the comparative analysis of trade and agricultural policies in Sub-Saharan Africa from a policy coherence for development point of view. The framework is established by reviewing the policies historically implemented in the region, linking them to the history of economic thought. The debates on the role of agriculture for development and on the use of public intervention and trade policies to promote development strategies are explored justifying the need to prioritize potential policy reforms based on their impacts on agriculture and economic growth, and the choice of computable general equilibrium modeling. Chapter I highlights the main challenges and opportunities for Sub-Saharan African agricultural trade stemming from the changes in the global agricultural markets and the trade agreements currently negotiated. Chapter II and III show that global computable general equilibrium provides a useful tool to compare regional integration to multilateral integration, in terms of their impacts on gross domestic product, welfare and sectoral growth distribution. Chapter III is a case study on Malawi. The global model is linked to a national model including household data to compare the distributional impacts of trade policies and agricultural policies on poverty. This dissertation highlights that regional integration could bring substantial economic gains to Sub-Saharan Africa, together with more diversified and more processed agricultural exports than multilateral integration. Not all policy reform is found to equally reduce the poverty of the small-scale farmers, the majority of the poors and vulnerable in Sub-Saharan Africa.