The Impact of Trade Liberalization on Export Growth and Import Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

In the 1960s and 1970s, Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries adopted interventionist policies aimed at protecting their domestic markets from foreign competition. But the 1979 oil shock, followed by the debt crisis and global recession of the early 1980s, left the region in economic doldrums: non-fuel primary commodity prices plummeted, debt to GDP ratio rose to 70% and per capita income declined by 14% from 1980 to 1987 (UNCTAD, 2004). This prompted international financial institutions, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), to offer financial aid to the region, but on condition that countries opened up their trade regimes. By the mid-1980s and early 1990s, free trade policies and Structural Adjustment Programmes began dominating the region. Early liberalizers included Niger and Ghana, while countries such as Angola, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), only embarked on significant trade reforms in the early twenty-first century. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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