Consequences of the Doha Round Trade Reforms for Africa

This paper provides a quantitative estimate of the potential economic consequences of multilateral trade reform for Africa using a framework that explicitly incorporates issues of concern to the region, such as preference erosion, loss of tariff revenue, and trade facilitation. The results suggest that while African countries would derive modest gains from full liberalization in a static model, the gains are likely to be substantial in a dynamic setting. Furthermore, they suggest that countries in sub-Saharan Africa are likely to incur losses under partial reforms. Since other regions of the world derive positive gains from partial reforms and it is unlikely that there will be complete liberalization in the current round of negotiations, the results underscore the need for development issues to be taken more seriously in the negotiations. More specifically, they stress the need to strengthen special and differential treatment provisions for African countries, and least developed countries in general, to allow them cushion the likely negative impact that may result from partial reforms.