Fruit safety regulations in the transatlantic region: How are Africa’s exports faring with the regulations?

Abstract

The regulations of fruit trade for safe consumption are taken seriously in the EU and US markets to protect the health of the consumers, animals, plants and environmental safety, and thereby reduce health expenditures. The fruit safety regulations as trade policy measures could be either trade-promoting or -impeding. The extensiveness and intensiveness of fruit safety regulations in these markets often have consequences for exporters from Africa and their desire to attain sustainable economic development. The effects of fruit safety regulations are heterogeneous across economic agents. To this end, many stakeholders in Africa’s food system have perceived compliance with these food regulatory measures as necessary conditions to access the developed countries’ markets, particularly in the EU and US. Besides, the competitiveness of Africa’s fruit exports has been impacted by the preponderance of the measures despite its comparative advantages in the fruits sub-sector. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the impact of the EU and US sanitary and phytosanitary measures on Africa’s fruit exports. The empirical strategy involves the use of an augmented gravity model which explore the disentangling of these impact at the extensive and intensive margins of exports. Given the nature of trade data and specifically for this study, the zero trade flows are considered at both margins of exports for 45 African countries from 1995 to 2017. This study finds that the US market is more trade-impeding to Africa’s fruit exports than the EU market. Thus, Africa needs policies tweaking in the fruit value chain quality infrastructure, fruits’ quality and standards enforcement, capacity development, continuous update and modernisation of the fruits’ safety laws, directives and/or regulations. This will enhance the fruits’ quality to propel their access to the transatlantic markets.