The Assessment of South-South Trade Potentialities: The Case of Turkey and ECOWAS Countries

This paper presents an economic analysis of the intensity and the trade potential between Turkey and the ECOWAS countries. Using the trade intensity, the trade complementarity and the revealed comparative advantage indexes, the results indicate that Ghana, Burkina Faso, and Togo have high export proportions towards Turkey while Benin, the Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Senegal, and Togo are increasingly using Turkey as a source of imports. Ghana appears to be the country with the most integrated trade relationship with Turkey compared to other countries in the region. Turkey has a comparative advantage over most of the ECOWAS countries in foodstuffs, textiles, metals, miscellaneous, and plastic and rubber. The trade complementarity index shows that a trade agreement would be ideal between Turkey, Ghana, and Guinea but such an agreement would not be viable for Liberia and Mali, while the results are less conclusive for the remaining of countries. In light of these results, we emphasize that trade potentials exist between Turkey and ECOWAS, notably in the processed food sector, textile, and cotton processing plants, and for an effective trade agreement implementation, individual characteristics of each ECOWAS country need to be taken into account.