Le commerce agricole en Afrique de l'Ouest et du Centre: les frontières sont-elles abolies ?

Catherine Araujo Bonjean () and Stéphanie Brunelin

Revue d’économie du développement, 2013, vol. 21, issue 1, 5-31

Abstract: The objective of this paper is to test the presence of barriers to agricultural trade in West and Central Africa. Despite the political and institutional development that promoted free trade within the customs and monetary unions in this region, the surveys conducted by independent regional observatories show that many obstacles to trade remain. These obstacles are difficult to measure. They are the consequence of the poor enforcement of the legislation, the lack of infrastructure and the level of risk among others. The approach followed in this paper aims at estimating the additional costs associated with border crossing using tests of market integration. The analysis is conducted on an original database including the price of five agricultural products in 142 markets located in 15 countries. We find three important results. Border crossing remains costly even within countries belonging to the WAEMU. However, the border effect is lower when the two countries share the same currency, which is the case of WAEMU countries. Results also show a decrease in the cost of the border and in the marketing costs related to the distance, between 1990 and 2011.

Keywords: market integration; frontier effect; agricultural trade; Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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