Abstract
There has been much concern about Africa's recent export performance. Even though tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade have been falling, Africa's share of world exports has declined and most African countries remain highly dependent upon a narrow range of primary commodities for export earnings. This article looks at factors that affect the export performance of manufacturing enterprises in eight African countries. In addition to enterprise characteristics (e.g., size, ownership and education of the manager), policy-related variables also affect export performance. Manufacturing enterprises are less likely to export in countries with restrictive trade and customs regulation and poor customs administration. In contrast, there is less evidence that the quality of domestic transportation infrastructure has a large impact on export performance. Although the coefficient on this variable is negative, it is statistically insignificant in most model specifications.
Highlights
Countries in Sub-Saharan Africa often export narrow ranges of products (Collier, 1998)
Even if more productive enterprises self-selected into exporting, it would still be possible that exporting results in further productivity improvements
2 Several investment climate assessments, which calculate productivity data for the firms in this study have found evidence consistent with the idea that exporters are more efficient
Summary
Countries in Sub-Saharan Africa often export narrow ranges of products (Collier, 1998). There is no definitive answer as to which hypothesis better explains the higher productivity of exporters, recent enterprise-level studies have found evidence consistent with the learning-by-exporting hypothesis in Africa.. Manufacturing enterprises in many African countries have been relatively unsuccessful in export markets, there are significant differences between countries Both macroeconomic data and the firm-level data used in this project suggest that manufacturing enterprises in Senegal and Kenya are more successful than enterprises in Ethiopia, Mali and Mozambique. The paper finds that despite significant reductions in tariff and non-tariff barriers, government policies, including restrictive trade and customs regulations and poor customs administration, continue to discourage exporting Improving policy in these areas could have a large impact—reducing trade and customs regulations from the level observed in the second. Even though a significant share of manufacturing exports in Africa are to neighboring countries, exports from land-locked countries appear lower than exports from other countries
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