Trade, Development Cooperation--What Future for Africa?: Current African Issues 29

Bi- and multilateral trade relations between external actors and individual African states or regional blocs are becoming ever more decisive. The trade policies of both the USA and the EU are anything but helpful. This is true of the USAs African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), the EU Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with South Africa and more recently the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) negotiated in the Post-Cotonou era of European relations with the South. All these initiatives have a potentially detrimental impact on regional integration. The latter remains, however, a priority in the developmental policy and strategy documents as formulated both by African agencies as well as the partners in development cooperation in the OECD countries. Hence the question of coherence between trade as aid and other areas of development strategy and cooperation remains to be answered.

The three analyses presented in this publication are centred on related issues in the ongoing process of globalization under the WTO regime, and their likely effect on African countries. Each chapter critically examines recent trends in the discourse on trade reform and development.

The contributions to this volume offer discussion and food for thought for scholars, policy makers and NGO activists alike on closely related topical issues in European-African trade relations and development cooperation.

Bi- and multilateral trade relations between external actors and individual African states or regional blocs are becoming ever more decisive. The trade policies of both the USA and the EU are anything but helpful. This is true of the USAs African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), the EU Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with South Africa and more recently the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) negotiated in the Post-Cotonou era of European relations with the South. All these initiatives have a potentially detrimental impact on regional integration. The latter remains, however, a priority in the developmental policy and strategy documents as formulated both by African agencies as well as the partners in development cooperation in the OECD countries. Hence the question of coherence between trade as aid and other areas of development strategy and cooperation remains to be answered.

The three analyses presented in this publication are centred on related issues in the ongoing process of globalization under the WTO regime, and their likely effect on African countries. Each chapter critically examines recent trends in the discourse on trade reform and development.

The contributions to this volume offer discussion and food for thought for scholars, policy makers and NGO activists alike on closely related topical issues in European-African trade relations and development cooperation.

Paul Goodisman was director of the National Institute for Studies and Research in Guinea Bissau before joining the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in the early 1990s. He is the United Nations and UNDP representative in Brazil and has published widely on development economics.

Henning Melber is Executive Director of the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation. He was Research Director of the Nordic Africa Institute and co-ordinator of the project “Liberation and Democracy in Southern Africa” (2000–2006) and Director of the Namibian Economic Policy Research Unit (NEPRU) in Windhoek (1992–2000).

Colin Stoneman recently retired from the Centre for Southern African Studies at the University of York. He is visiting research fellow at the Centre for Development Studies at the University of Leeds and has published extensively on the economies and trade of Southern African countries. He is coordinating editor of the Journal of Southern African Studies.