Trade summary

The Commission for Africa has identified that rich nations are putting up indefensible trade barriers against African producers. Rich nations use subsidies, tariffs and other barriers to give themselves an unfair advantage; removing these barriers would enable African producers to compete fairly on the world market. Africa also finds it difficult to produce enough goods, of the right quality and price and is burdened by bureaucracy, cumbersome customs procedures and corruption; reform would improve the capacity of Africa to trade.

Proposed Solutions

• Improve Africa’s capacity to trade through improvements to its transport infrastructure and the simplification of tariff systems between African countries.
• Reform of excessive bureaucracy and cumbersome customs procedures and halt corruption by public servants.
• Make it easier to set up businesses in Africa.
• Rich nations to dismantle their unfair subsidies and lower their tariff and non-tariff barriers to African goods.