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This paper critically analyzes the African Union's (AU) efforts toward continental integration, highlighting the gap between its rhetoric and the actions of member states' political leaders. The paper suggests that the AU's focus on individual state sovereignty, rather than continental unity, is partly due to its self-serving role for the political elite, serving as a vessel for regime-boosting and sovereignty-enhancing purposes. The paper acknowledges some of the successes of the AU in reducing armed conflicts and military coups through its Peace and Security Council, Panels of Conflicts Resolution, and the African Standby Force for peace missions. It also recognizes the potential benefits of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA), which aims to lower or eliminate cross-border tariffs on most goods, promote investment, and pave the way for a continent-wide customs union. However, the paper argues that 'performative' Pan-Africanism efforts demonstrate the persistent gap between the AU's rhetoric and actions. Therefore, a close examination of the AU reveals how reigning regimes use regionalism as 'opportunity structures' in political crises. The paper suggests that the AU's focus on individual state sovereignty reinforces traditional notions of sovereignty and hinders the process of continental integration. The paper contributes to the scholarship of regionalism by examining the less prominent roles of integration in Africa. It also highlights how supranational entities can be adaptive and mutative for their specific locales. Finally, the paper calls for critically examining the AUs role and potential for promoting genuine continental unity. KEYWORDS: African Union; regional economic communities; AfCFTA; Regionalism in Africa; Sovereignty-boosting; pan- Africanism; Regime-boosting; Performative regionalism, INTRODUCTION The African Union (AU) mission is unambiguous: 'An integrated, prosperous, and peaceful Africa, driven by its citizens and representing a dynamic force in the global arena.' (1) And supporters [...]

Several studies have used various datasets and methodologies to analyze the relationship between bilateral trade and income convergence among trading partners. However, most studies have not paid attention to the effect that income levels and nature of bilateral trade have on the speed of income convergence. In this paper, we argue that the income levels of trading partners and the nature of bilateral trade play important role in the relationship between bilateral trade and international income convergence. To account for the effect of income levels of trading partners, this paper presents an approach that explicitly accounts for bilateral trade among high-income (OECD) countries, bilateral trade between high-income and low-income (SSA) countries, and bilateral trade among low-income (SSA) countries. We also used total trade data for 25 OECD countries and 30 Sub-Saharan African countries over the period 1980-2018 to avoid the potential bias for selecting certain countries based on arbitrary percentage of trade relationship. We used the 2SLS estimations technique to avoid endogeneity problems due to the nature of the dataset. The paper finds that the bilateral trade-income convergence relationship for OECD to SSA is the strongest. This result throws light on the claim that the nature of bilateral trade between high-income and low-income countries promotes one directional knowledge spillover from high-income to low-income countries which enables low-income countries to adopt new technologies and grow faster than their high-income counterparts. Also, bilateral trade among OECD countries, which mostly comprises of differentiated products, promotes descent income convergence among them. However, bilateral trade among SSA countries has the least effect on income convergence. Findings of the study have important implications for bilateral trade among low-income countries and between low income and high income countries. First, if SSA countries want to develop and catch up with their rich counterparts, they should continue to promote free trade with high income countries by dismantling remaining protection policies. Second, the African Continental Free Trade Area's (AfCFTA) efforts to boost the manufacturing sector through industrialization is in the right direction to promote the production of more differentiated products in Africa which will create growth in income for member countries as they trade more. Finally, there is the need for SSA countries to increase investment rates and improve human capital accumulation to enable them to accelerate the adoption of new technologies and grow faster than their high-income counterparts, while bridging the income gap between them through trade. JEL Classifications: F11; F14; O33; O47 Keywords: Economic Openness; Income Convergence; Bilateral Trade; Economic Growth; 2SLS Estimator, INTRODUCTION The implications of international trade on income differential among trading nations have been professionally researched since the works of neoclassical growth theorists (Solow, 1956; Swan 1956) which generated the [...]

Using a micro-historical method, this article reconceptualizes the family firm as a trans-local extended household. The family firm plays a central role in the historiography of long-distance trade in the Indian Ocean. Yet it remains a largely under-theorized concept. The conceptual shift that this article proposes enables the significant analytical incorporation of a broader cast of historical actors, including marital and 'networked' kin. From this expanded viewpoint, the family firm emerges as a node in overlapping networks of capital-financial, social, and symbolic-and as a site of intersecting intimate and economic transactions. The article also explores the historical transformations-economic, legal, and social-that reverberated across the western Indian Ocean in the late nineteenth century. Eschewing a static institutional model, it argues that any analysis of the family firm must attend to the dynamic and complex shifts in household relationships that were wrought by such transformations. Keywords: kinship, trading networks, household, slavery, credit, Indian Ocean., ON June 8, 1892, Manekbai, the daughter-in-law of renowned trader Jairam Shivji, sent a startling petition from her home in Kachchh to the consular court of Zanzibar. Manekbai wrote to [...]

Forest products trade has a critical role to play in both global economic development and environmental protection. Based on the trade data of global forest products, raw forest products, and processed forest products from 2000 to 2020, this paper constructed a trade network and analyzed its pattern by using indicators such as density, average distance, out- strength, and in-strength. The results show that from 2000 to 2020, the global trade network of forest products has been increasingly connected. Compared with the trade of raw material forest products, the trade network of processed forest products is more closely connected and its transport efficiency is higher. Countries with high GDP such as USA, China, and Germany are leading trading countries in forest products. Countries with abundant forest resources are the major exporters of raw forest products, while labor- and capital-abundant countries are major exporters of processed forest products. Countries with abundant labor and capital and high GDP are the main importers of raw forest products. Key words: complex network, forest products, trade patterns, 1. Introduction Forest products are an indispensable and important resource for the construction of the national economy, and also an important bulk international trade product in the world. The global [...]

Do comprehensive trade agreements increase the participation of States in global value chains (GVCs) and contribute to their development? Although there is extensive evidence in the trade literature that deep preferential trade agreements (PTAs) can increase States' bilateral export of final goods and, by implication, contribute to local development, much less is known about the characteristics of this effect on GVC relations. This paper answers the question in the framework of a gravity model and uses a comprehensive dyadic data set on trade in GVCs, PTAs, export and other characteristics for 188 countries and economies between 1990 and 2018. Results provide robust evidence that deep PTAs increase members' bilateral trade in GVCs over the long term, especially when these agreements involve at least one developing country or economy and include provisions that support investment. These results underscore that GVC-facilitating deep PTAs are a powerful policy tool that can mobilize the potential of production and trade in GVCs for development. Keywords: development, global value chains (GVCs), integration, investment, trade agreements JEL classification codes: F14, F15, F55, F63, 1. Introduction and background Over the past three decades, there have been two important changes in the organization and institutions of international trade and production: the proliferation and deepening of [...]

The relationship between economic integration and income inequality is extremely contentious due to its complicated impact across key channels of globalization. This paper analyses the distributional effects of globalization through [...]

This study analysed the determinants of trade flow of some selected non-traditional agricultural export commodities in Nigeria, for the period 2007 to 2017. The objective of the study was to analyse the factors that determine the export of these commodities. The study used trade data of thirty-six importing countries of these commodities around the world. The secondary data used was sourced from various institutions' databases. A balanced panel data from 36 countries for the years 2007-2017 were used with one dependent variable and ten explanatory variables (a total of n=396, N=36, and T=11); all variables were expressed in natural logarithm. The gravity estimation model was used in data analysis. The Hausman test was used in model selection and the test rejected the null hypothesis (random effects were efficient). Therefore, the fixed effects model was used in the gravity model results' interpretation. The gravity model results indicate that Nigeria's export of non-traditional commodities (classified as HS12 in the United Nations International Trade Statistics) follows the basic gravity model apriori expectations, implying that bilateral trade flows will increase in proportion to the trading partner's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and decrease in proportion to the distance involved.The level of openness of Nigeria's economy and that of the importing countries were major determinants of trade flow of Nigeria's HS12 commodity exports. This variable carried the expected positive sign for both Nigeria and its trading Partners and was also statistically significant at the 5% level. However, the real exchange rate variable was not a major determinant of HS12 commodity trade. The distance variable was statistically significant indicating the need for regional trade expansion. The dummy variable of the trading partner being an African country was positive and a significant factor in the determinants of the HS12 commodities. However, colonial or official language ties were negatively signed and significant, implying that this was not a major contributor to trade in these commodities. The study recommends that favorable import and export promotion policies and trade openness to boost growth in the quantity of non-traditional exports should form part of government trade policies; and Nigeria should also take advantage of the proposed African Free Trade Area considering the gains she stands to make through proximity in distance. Key words: Nigeria, Agricultural exports, Gravity model, Openness, HS12 commodities, INTRODUCTION Agriculture has continually become a major item on the Agenda for Economic Growth in Nigeria. So much emphasis is being placed on increasing agricultural production as a means of [...]

Seaports are an integral part of maritime transport and major facilitators of international trade which is an important determinant of economic growth. Therefore, identifying the determinants of the choice of seaports is very important for economic growth policy purposes. This is particularly more essential to the African continent which has been plagued with relatively lower economic and social welfare outcomes. Hence, this study uses cross-sectional data on the opinions of customers of selected seaports in ECOWAS to investigate the determinants of the choice of seaports in the region. We use a two-stage sampling technique to select seaports and respondents (customers) used by the study. The seaports are the Port of Banjul (Gambia), Port of Apapa (Nigeria), Tin Can Island Port (Nigeria), Port of Abidjan (Cote d'lvoire), Port of Cotonou (Benin), Port of Tema (Ghana) and Port of Lome (Togo). The customers surveyed are 1,461 exporters and importers (shippers), shipping lines, freight forwarders and custom brokers. The Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and the multinomial probit model are used for the empirical analyses. The results indicate that, adequacy of seaport facilities (the size of container port yards and seaport's shore container - handling equipment), reasonable seaport cost (reasonable cargo - handling charges and berth service fees) and efficiency of seaport (average length of ship's service time and efficiency of the port/terminal's service operations for the multimodal interface) influence the choice of the most frequently used seaports. In addition, the choice of the most frequently used seaports is found to be determined by services at seaport (assistance provided by the seaport with regard to claims handling, frequency of departures that the seaport can facilitate and quality of the personnel involved in seaport operations) as well as intermodal and value-added services (provision of support services e.g. incoming goods inspection, spare parts support and connectivity of the seaport or port terminal to a multimodal interface). Moreover, information system availability (the availability of cargo - tracing/handling information service and modern IT and computerized information systems) and seaport geography (maximum distance to another seaport and average distance to other seaports) are also found to determine the choice of the most frequently used seaports. It is therefore recommended that policy designs aimed at enhancing demand for seaport services in ECOWAS, pay attention to these factors. Keywords: Choice of seaports; firm growth and sustainability; trade facilitation; ECOWAS; Africa, INTRODUCTION Rising competition among firms makes the choice of a firm by customers an important aspect of its growth and sustainability (Baily, 2005; Sakyi et al., 2020). Choosing a firm [...]