Essays on the Implications of European Union Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures and Technical Barriers to Trade on African Exports

This dissertation investigates the implications of the EU non-tariff measures, focusing on both SPS measures on food safety and technical regulation aspects of TBT that govern the agricultural food sector, and their consequence for African exports. This is undertaken in four distinct but interrelated essays. In the first essay, we investigate if the European Union (EU) sanitary and phytosanitary standards and technical regulations governing fish products are overprotective in nature following the reoccurring rejection of Africa’s fish exports by the EU at its borders since 2008. To produce unbiased and consistent estimates for policy making, we undertake a careful consideration of the robustness of a number of widely used estimators. We find that the EU food measures are indeed non-protectionist in spite of the huge level of Africa’s fish exports rejected at the EU border since 2008. This result shows that the high incidence of border rejection cannot be wholly attributed to stringent EU fish standards but rather to Africa’s inability to comply with the EU standards. We therefore agitate that deeper trade negotiations between the EU and African countries involving a significant transfer of science and technology to Africa could help improve Africa’s compliance to EU fish standards and ensure increased export penetration. The second essay of the thesis has focused on how the EU sanitary and phytosanitary standards on pesticides residual limits affect selected Africa’s fresh fruit and vegetable exports using a previously unexploited dataset on EU regulation of citrus and tomato pesticide standards. In addition, we also analyse the trade effect EU entry price system which aims to protect EU growers of certain fruits and vegetables against international competition. We represent these trade costs in the context of a Melitz firm heterogeneity framework using the Helpman, Melitz and Rubenstein (2008) method. At the extensive margin of trade, the high stringency of EU pesticide standards prevents new entry into the EU market, drives less productive firms away, and discourages existing exporters from expanding their market base. However, at the intensive margin, the trade effect is product specific as standard can either be a catalyst or barrier to export success, depending on the product considered. Furthermore, our results also reveal that the EU entry price system has no apparent effects on all products considered but significantly impedes the export of tomatoes to the EU. To ensure increased market access, we recommend the negotiation of deeper trade agreements with comprehensive provisions on standards by the trading partners. In the third essay, we investigate the protectionist extent of EU sanitary and phytosanitary measures covering pesticide standards using a sample of EU food imported from African countries with a specific focus on tomatoes and citrus fruits. We formalize what protectionism is by comparing EU food safety standards to the internationally scientific referenced benchmarks regulated by both the Food and Agricultural Organisation and the World Health Organisation. Our results show that the EU tomato food sub-sector is less dependent on imports and is overprotected by more stringent standards relative to the international benchmarks. Conversely, we find that the EU orange and lime and lemon food sub-sectors are heavily import dependent and are under-protected relative to the international standards. These results largely support the hypothesis that heavily import dependent food sub-sectors are less protected, and vice versa. The implication of our findings highlights the fact that importing countries’ standards are not always protectionist or protectionist as widely portrayed in the literature and can at times be anti-protectionist relative to internationally acceptable standards. The fourth essay was inspired from antecedent evidence that selected food exports of many African countries were rejected at the EU border due to their inability to conform with the required EU standards. Thus, in the fourth essay, we investigate the causes of the rejections of African exports at the EU borders and collated detailed data on the driving the inabilities of Africa countries to comply with EU food safety standards. Our results indicate that natural geographical hurdle, poor trade-related infrastructure, inefficient border procedures and a lack of technical personnel increase the incidences of rejection at the EU border and add to Africa’s challenges in accessing EU markets. In addition, in line with the growing literature, this study finds empirical support for the proposition that institutions, infrastructure and logistic quality matters for increased market penetration and continuous integration into the global trading system. The study recommends that the barrier created by the EU rejection of Africa’s exports can be overcome through the strengthening of Africa’s institutions and trade facilitation measures.