Trade Policy Development - UNECA

ECA provides on-demand technical support to African policymakers on trade policy development. Currently, ECA is working with Kenya, Nigeria and Sierra Leone on trade capacity building projects. ECA’s African Institute for Economic Development and Planning (IDEP) provides training courses for African officials in this area. ECA is also providing support to African countries to implement the Boosting Intra-African Trade Action Plan, including the development of a monitoring and evaluation framework to track the implementation of the plan at Regional Economic Community level.

ECA is also conducting research into how African countries can adapt their trade policies to meet the challenges posed by climate change. The Commission plans to publish a paper later this year reviewing existing literature in this area. It will also host a session at the forthcoming Conference on Global Economic Analysis hosted by the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) at Purdue University and another with the Centre for Trade Policy and Law (CTPL) at Carleton University to share these findings and discuss further research in this area. The Commission will then conduct original research in this area.

ECA is involved in producing the Africa Regional Integration Index (ARII, with African Development Bank and the African Union Commission) and the ECA country profiles, which help to track African countries’ progress in implementing their regional integration commitments to one another and provide country and region-specific policy advice as to how to improve the level of regional integration.