Gaining from Trade in Southern Africa

Abstract

Over the past three decades, economic growth in most of the countries of Southern Africa has been too slow to generate significant improvements in the standard of living or to lift large fractions of the population out of poverty. Explaining Africa’s poor growth performance and, more generally, the sharp differences in growth performance across countries and regions has been the focus of at least 14 studies in the 1990s. One conclusion to emerge from these studies is that openness to trade is associated with higher rates of economic growth. These findings have reinforced an increasing conviction among policy-makers in Southern Africa that regional trade liberalisation is an important step in efforts to improve growth performance throughout the region.