# **I.** Introduction: Trade **and African** Development **Prospects**

Economists have long recognized that expanded export opportunities can provide an important stimulus to developing countries' industrialization and growth. For example, Helleiner (1972), Keesing (1967) and Meier (1968) drew on economic theory to show how increased exports can accelerate growth through: (i) learning effects from the development of new products, technologies and information sources; (ii) opportunities to achieve scale economies that could not be realized in many developing countries' relatively small domestic markets; (iii) benefits from increased linkages between export industries and other sectors of the economy; (iv) weakening of monopoly elements that may affect foreign trade which, in turn, would result in more favorable import and export prices; or (v) less reliance on exports of primary commodities whose unstable prices may make development plamning difficult. Numerous empirical studies (see among others Balassa 1977, 1984, Kravis 1970) document the superior growth and industrialization performance of developing countries that adopted outward oriented (export) growth strategies.' In spite of the potentially important positive effects attributed to increased exports, it is sometimes argued that OECD trade restrictions may impair developing countries ability to pursue trade related growth strategies.<sup>2</sup> Given the importance that has sometimes been attached to the potential negative impact of developed countries' trade barriers, this study examines their influence on sub-Saharan African exports. The focus is on Sub-Saharan Africa due to the below average growth and export performance of this region.<sup>3</sup> From the mid-1950s to 1990 Africa's 'Meier (1968, Chapter 7) provides a useful review of arguments advanced in support of outward oriented as opposed to import substitution policies. Key elements of the latter often center on the promotion of infant industries, or efforts to reduce expenditures of limited foreign exchange. See Yeats (1979, Chapter 2) or Little, Scitovsky and Scott (1970) for further assessments of import substitution policies.

2For example, the Commonwealth Secretariat (1982, p. 61) stated 'Protectionist measures (in industrial countries) discriminate against developing countries. For not only has it been on the products in which these countries are primarily interested that most of the new quantitative restrictions have been imposed, but it is also the developing countries (especially the poorer ones) which have suffered most. The most important restrictions, as far as developing countries are concerned, have been on textiles and clothing; exports of this group of products are so significant for these countries, and increasingly so for the poorer and smaller ones, that they regard developments under the umbrella of the MFA as a barometer of developed country attitudes towards protectionism in general. Their experience in this respect has been discouraging." 3UNCTAD (1993) reports world trade grew at an annual rate of 6 percent over 1980-1990, yet the exports of sub-Saharan African countries _declined_ by 2.1 percent over this interval. The UNCTAD report also shows African exports are more highly concentrated in primary commodities than are those of other developing countries.