Trade Distorting Provisions Under the WTO Agreement on Agriculture: Addressing the Question of Africa’s Limited Participation in Agricultural Trade

Abstract

Developing a sound agriculture sector is often seen as an engine for promoting economic growth that leads to poverty reduction. Despite Africa being endowed with natural resources, trade in agriculture is still a challenge in light of the international policies and market trends coupled with competition faced with developed countries’ heavily subsidized agricultural products on the global market. The decreasing prices for agricultural products, due to high productivity growth in other parts of the world often supported by subsidies and protection particularly in developed countries, have weakened export earnings and intensified competition between foreign and local products. This has led most African countries, particularly the least developed countries (LDCs) to lament that provisions under the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) are fraught with inequalities in that they have practically allowed the developed countries to highly subsidize their agricultural products to the detriment of the developing and LDCs thereby leading to agriculture trade distortion. Despite commitments aimed at reducing tariffs, domestic support, and export subsidies, according to developing and LDCs, various loopholes in the AoA in fact reinforce inequities whose effect is that Africa’s agriculture sector cannot properly compete on the global agricultural trade. This article critically assesses the trade distorting provisions under the AoA and whether the removal of trade distorting subsidies by developed countries would enhance Africa’s trade in agriculture. Furthermore, it analyses whether the AoA gives enough flexibility to developing and least developed countries to use their domestic agricultural policies to enhance their quest for global trade in agriculture.