Gaining From Trade In Southern Africa

Policy-makers in Southern Africa are increasingly convinced that regional trade liberalization can improve growth performance and stimulate development throughout the region. To succeed where previous attempts have failed, however, governments must address two key issues. The first of these is policy coordination - the broad range of domestic policies must be made compatible with the proposed trade reforms. The second is institution building - concerted attention must be devoted to strengthening weak institutions and infrastructure. The contributors are among the leading authorities on regional integration in Africa.

Focuses on the place of Southern Africa in the globalized economy. Identifies the overall economic trends in the African continent and the responses, required and actual, to the impact of an increasingly interdependent world economy.

Renewing Development in Sub-Saharan Africa reviews the debates and brings together specialist contributions, to provide a clear guide to the major complexities of African development. They lay the foundation for designing a range of individual country-specific policy-sets, in which the strategic components are prioritized according to each country's constraints and opportunities. The emphasis of the book is on the identification of effective strategies that will enable individual countries to most effectively exploit their growth opportunities and to meet poverty-reducing and other key equity objectives.

This book explores regionalism in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and highlights the influence of the European Union (EU) as an extra-regional actor on the organization and integration process. The analysis is guided by theory and explains the emergence, institutional design and performance of SADC’s major integration projects in the issue areas of the economy, security and infrastructure. It provides in this way a profound assessment of the organization as a whole. The study shows that South Africa plays a regional key role as driver for integration while external influence of the EU is ambivalent in character because it unfolds a supportive or obstructive impact. The author argues that the EU gains influence over regional integration processes in the SADC on the basis of patterns of asymmetric interdependence and becomes a ‘game-changer’ insofar as it facilitates or impedes solutions to regional cooperation problems.

Southern Africa suffers from disproportionately expensive capital which denies the region its full growth potential. This book presents ideas and proposals for reducing the cost of capital in the region.

This book provides a thorough and rigorous discussion on the impact of trade liberalisation on economic development with a special focus on the African continent. The author presents the rationale for trade liberalisation, trade liberalisation frameworks, the trade liberalisation economic development nexus, impediments to trade, and contemporary issues of international trade. In this book, notwithstanding the benefits from trade liberalisation, the author shows that African trade as a share of global trade has remained flat at 3% as in 1975, while the continent’s exports have remained raw materials and its intra-regional trade at less than 15% of total trade, which is the lowest in the world (UNCTAD, 2020). With respect to key economic development indicators such as economic growth, poverty levels, and employment levels, this book shows that, ironically and in direct contrast with the conventional views that trade liberalisation alleviates poverty, trade liberalisation in Africa has resulted in high levels of unemployment and low economic growth which ultimately lead to increased poverty. In addition, this book provides a detailed analysis of why trade liberalisation has failed to yield meaningful benefits to Africa. The binding constraints and blockages which prevent positive spin-offs on trade liberalisation in Africa are discussed in detail in this book. In the same vein, the author provides practical strategies which must be adopted by African countries in order to gain from trade liberalisation, making this work a must-read for African governments, academia, trade experts, regional trading blocs, the World Trade Organization, and development partners. In view of this, and as part of the disruptive and structural transformation policies, the author discusses case studies and international experience contextualised to Africa as well as strategies for addressing the trade-related infrastructure gap, production capacities, export promotion, and aid for trade.

Stemming from an international and multidisciplinary network of leading specialists, this best-selling text is fully updated with new chapter additions. With the first edition prepared at the end of the last century, this new edition anticipates the world of regionalism as we move further into this millennium. This new edition offers: " A vigorous response to conventional wisdom on EU international identity. " An exploration of key issues of regionalism versus globalization and the potential for world economic and political governance through regionalism. " A key resource for postgraduate or undergraduate study and research of international relations, European studies, comparative politics and international political economy. Taking into account the expanded European Union, the volume comprises contributions from established scholars in the field to highlight external relations in the framework of the development of regional arrangements within the globalized world of the 21st century.

Stemming from an international and multidisciplinary network of leading specialists, this best-selling text is fully updated with new chapter additions. With the first edition prepared at the end of the last century and the second edition adding inter-regional relations, this new edition focuses on competing models of regional cooperation within a multipolar world and the role of the European Union.