This paper reviews trade policy reform and performance in Africa since the 1980s. African countries have implemented significant trade liberalisation in this period, in particular reducing tariffs. This has usually resulted in an increase in imports, but export growth has often been sluggish so...

More than a decade after substantial macroeconomic reforms were initiated in many Africancountries, aggregate growth, has at best remained inconsistent in many of those reforming countries.While the reasons for poor aggregate performance vary across countries, there is substantial evidencethat...