Trade barriers in Africa – How Nigeria banned 150 West Africa exports

Growing trade barriers that hinder intra-African trade leading to losses in billions of dollars in revenues to African countries can be seen in the practical example of the list of prohibitions that Nigeria has on exports from other African countries.

These high trade barriers lead to regional trade fragmentation which 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 played an important role to increase economic growth particularly in East Asia, have yet to materialize in Africa, according to a World Bank report.

Early last year, Ghana and Nigeria signed a bilateral agreement to govern trade between the two countries. Nigeria has for more than four years before 2010, banned the importation of over 150 products, either from abroad or the ECOWAS sub-region, in spite of various trade liberalisation policies in the sub-region.

Some reasons that have been attributed to a decline in Ghanas’ exports to Nigeria are mainly as a result of Nigeria’s Ban/Prohibited List as well as problems exporters encounter conveying their goods to Nigeria especially at the Seme border, officials of the Authority have told ghanabusinessnews.com.

The conclusions of the report are of particular pertinence for Ghana and the presentation of the report will be complemented by recent analysis of the barriers to trade that result from the lack of implementation of ECOWAS commitments in the region. In particular, the presentation will focus on how these barriers impact on ordinary traders in Ghana when trading with Nigeria.

According to Kobina Ade Coker, the Chairman, Governing Council, Ghana Export Promotion Authority, one area that the Authority will pursue vigorously is the enterprise and product development approach which involves the identification of targeted companies and products for specific markets.

These companies, he explained, would benefit from structured training assistance that would make them better prepared to face up to the market demands and competition.

By Pascal Kelvin Kudiabor