Intra-Sub-Saharan African Trade: is it too Little?

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Abstract
Despite the proliferation of regional trade arrangements in SubSaharan Africa (SSA) in the past two decades many of which were specifically created to boost trade among the countries in the region, intra-SSA trade is still very limited and has hardly grown over time. However, although many authors have shown that intra SSA trade is small, none has asked whether the existing level of intra-SSA trade is higher or lower than what one would expect, given some plausible model of the determination of trade flows. This paper uses a traditional gravity model to compare the actual trade with what a gravity model would predict. We find that the gravity model predicts very well the low level of intra-SSA trade. For the nineteen SSA countries in our sample, the actual share of SSA share of imports plus exports was an average (median) of 8.1 per cent (4.5 per cent) while the gravity model predicts a slightly lower, not higher, mean (median) of 7.5 per cent (4.5 per cent).

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