These trade data are also often in conflict with one another, occasionally even by several orders of magnitude. The sparse research agenda on trade issues is a serious problem, in light of Southern Africa's desire for deepened regional integration, improved prospects for economic growth, and equitable development. The paper will show the major inconsistencies in the trade data between the different data sources. The main contribution of this paper is the reconciliation of the trade data, using a 'cross-entropy' estimation method, to make efficient use of prior information about the structure of trade in the Southern Africa region. The benefit of this approach is that it is very flexible and undemanding in its statistical assumptions, and it allows the use of the trade information in a variety of forms, such as inequality constraints, errors in measurement, and extraneous estimates of various parameters.
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