Trade can play a crucial role in the development of services sectors in Africa. Services offer new dynamic opportunities for exports, especially for land-locked countries, while opening up to imports of services and foreign direct investment is a key mechanism to increase competition and drive...

This report addresses the question raised in its title - now that 18 interim Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) have been initialed and negotiations of full EPAs have been launched, what should African countries and regional EPA-groups do? Part two of the report analyzes the outcome of the...

The main objectives of this study are the following: 1) foster a better understanding of key drivers of recent trade performance; 2) assess current trade policies and provide additional recommendations to strengthen the Government's trade integration strategy; 3) identify core bottlenecks in the...

For a small and landlocked country like North Macedonia, trade integration is particularly important to sustain the country's economic growth and transformation. The importance of trade became even more visible during a global crisis and in the post-pandemic recovery period. Trade integration...

"This study discusses potential economic implications for Nigeria of an Economic Partnership Agreement with the European Union. It uses the World Bank's Tariff Reform Impact Simulation Tool to assess the effects of preferential tariff liberalization with respect to the European Union. The...

"In defiance of its unimpressive track in structural reforms and relatively low foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows, Romanian exports have experienced surprisingly strong performance in both EU and non-EU markets since 2000 after a four-year period of flat growth. While the first phase of...

The objective of this study is to assess the impact of the East-West Highway improvement program on Georgia's ability to access international markets. As highlighted extensively in the literature, improving transport infrastructure and the efficiency of the logistics sector can help countries...