The determinants of export promotion in Africa: evidence from the implemented trade facilitation measures

The export flow bottlenecks impact the extensiveness and intensiveness of Africa’s exports to its trade partners. These bottlenecks are influenced by supply chain disruptions, administrative inefficiencies, quality infrastructure deficiencies, customs procedures’ inefficacies, a proliferation of trade documentation, etc. The preponderance of these bottlenecks brought to the fore the need to improve exports through trade facilitation policies. Several trade facilitation measures have been implemented with different export outcomes. Nevertheless, the opportunities characterising the implementation of trade facilitation measures have provided the necessary impetus for many African countries to embark on export promotion. This study investigates the determinants of the implemented trade facilitation measures in Africa from the perspective of extensive and intensive margins of exports. An augmented gravity model derived from Helpman, Melitz and Rubenstein’s framework is adopted in this study to a panel of 54 African countries between 2005 and 2018. The findings indicate that export-facilitating quality infrastructure such as telephone, internet services and time to import and export determine the improvement in export facilitation at the extensive and intensive export margins. An improved implementation of these quality infrastructures, except for the exporting time, propels the probability of export; while they enhance the trade intensity, except for internet service usage. Although the robustness checks also suggest somewhat similar outputs, the logistics performance index indicates that though there are challenges in Africa’s quest for improved trade facilitation, the implemented export-facilitating quality infrastructures are export-enhancing.