West Africa's First Regional Study on Barriers to Trade by Road Released
May 18, 2010
In March 2010, the USAID-funded Agribusiness and Trade Promotion (ATP) project, in partnership with USAID's West Africa Trade Hub and the World Bank-funded Abidjan-Lagos Corridor Organization, released Borderless: Removing Trade Barriers in West Africa. This is West Africa's first regional assessment on road harassment and is helping to raise awareness about the needs and ways to advocate for reforms to reduce trade barriers across the region. The report summarizes the three organizations' work in monitoring road harassment in West Africa in the hope that government, civil society and the private sector will be moved to act to reduce the checkpoints.
The transport sector in West Africa plays an essential role in the economic development of the sub-region, generating approximately six percent of its gross domestic product. But road harassment and bribes along trade corridors have made cross-border trading in West Africa unnecessarily difficult for traders and truckers. Reducing transport costs, which are among the highest in the world, and improving efficiency of transport will contribute to increased trade in the West African region and lower the costs of imported staples, like rice, improving food security for millions of people.
A legal truck driver going from Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire, to Lagos, Nigeria, can pay up to US$150 in bribes, and the illegal road barriers can double the length of the 3-day trip from Ouagadougou to Tema, Ghana. Such delays endanger the health of animals and risk sales when commodities do not arrive to buyers on time. Working with the governments of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo, the ATP project is helping to reduce bribes and delays along primary West African trucking routes.
The ATP project, implemented by Abt Associates, works to increase the value and volume of intraregional agricultural trade in West Africa through collaboration with West African regional integration partners such as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the Permanent Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel (Comité Permanent Inter-États de Lutte contre la Sécheresse au Sahel), and the West African Economic and Monetary Union.
