Countries

Figure 7.4 Import Coverage of Top 10 NTMs in Sub-Saharan African Countries

Government procurement restrictions Seasonal duties Licensing for economic reasons n.e.s. Authorization requirement for TBT reasons Advance payment requirements n.e.s. Trade-related investment measures, n.e.s Advance import deposit Labeling requirements Consumption taxes Preshipment inspection

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20

Share of total import value (%)

Source: Kee and Nicita 2016. Note: The data cover 14 Sub-Saharan countries for which nontariff measure (NTM) data were available: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, The Gambia, Ghana, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, and Togo. Data are the latest available between 2011 and 2015, varying by country. percentages are shares of the aggregate value of the 14 countries’ imports. n.e.s. = not elsewhere specified; TBT = technical barriers to trade.

Restrictiveness of African NTMs, by Trade Partner Region

Compared with other regions, African restrictiveness is the world’s highest in terms of tariffs but less restrictive than other regions regarding SPS/TBT NTMs (figure 7.11). By contrast, Sub-Saharan Africa is the second most restrictive region, after South Asia, in non-SPS/TBT measures.

Because most NTMs in Africa are nondiscriminatory, and not many free trade areas were in force in the region during the period of the data (2011–15),4 it is not surprising that the Sub-Saharan African countries’ tariffs and NTM AVEs on imports from other African trade partners are similar to those on imports from the rest of the world (figure 7.11). Nevertheless, the NTM AVEs of some of the region’s countries, such as Ethiopia and Niger, are higher on African partners (figures 7.9 and 7.12). This is because some measures, like certification requirements, can be costlier to fulfill for African countries than for other, more-developed partners.

At the sectoral level, the patterns of NTM restrictiveness on African trade partners (figure 7.13) are similar to those on all partners (figure 7.10). Nevertheless, some important differences exist. For example, NTM restrictiveness is higher on African partners in agriculture (where the SPS/TBT AVEs double the tariffs) and in agroindustry (which match the tariffs) (figure 7.13). Non-SPS/TBT measures also affect those two sectors particularly.

Compared with the barriers that African exports face in other regions, tariffs are particularly high, whereas NTMs are lower than in other