COMESA's Trading with China : Patterns and Prospects

As trade between China and African countries continues to expand, so does the debate as regards the developmental outcomes it is likely to produce. This paper examines the trade relations that have developed between the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) and China since 2000. The bilateral trade — composed largely of exports of primary goods and imports of manufactures by the COMESA region — has registered very high rates of growth. The trade balance has been for the most part in China's favor. The paper uses a gravity model of bilateral trade estimated by the Hausman-Taylor method for a reference sample of countries to project the COMESA-China trade “out of sample.” Empirical estimates suggest a substantial degree of underutilization of the bilateral export and import potentials. The main implication is that there are still strong resistances to the bilateral trade that need to be addressed