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The Southern Africa Customs Union (SACU) is the oldest existing customs union in the world. It was established in 1910 pursuant to a Customs Union Agreement between the then Union ...

During the week of 4 to 11 July 2016 tralac hosted a training workshop for the COMESA Court of Justice. It was a very worthwhile experience in terms of offering an opportunity to t...

The Agreement establishing a Tripartite Free Trade Area (TFTA) among the member states of COMESA, the EAC and SADC was signed on 10 June 2015 in Egypt during the Third Tripartite S...

In recent years South Africa has increasingly turned to changes in the SACU tariffs to stimulate its economy. These changes have included both decreases in the case of inputs into ...

Seldom has a single political event revealed such an astounding degree of failure to grasp and prepare for the consequences of an act of self-inflicted harm. The Economist writes o...

The Tripartite FTA (TFTA) is often referred to in publications and in statements as if already a reality, or at least imminent. The true position is that this agreement is not in f...

It may sound alarmist to suggest that a regional trade arrangement which has been in existence for more than a hundred years finds itself in a crisis. On the other hand, many a com...

The tourism sector makes a significant contribution to the Gross Domestic Product of all Member States in the Southern African Development Community. It is an important provider of...

In today’s globalised world, production processes have been split up and different parts of production relocated around the world. Global value chains (GVCs) are now attributed t...

Over the last few years tralac and others have undertaken significant research on the implications of trade liberalisation in Africa. For example, Jensen and Sandrey (2015) model s...

While the recent focus on Africa’s merchandise trade has been the spectacular rise of trade with the BRIC countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China and the commensurate declin...

The main feature of global trade since at least 2000 has been the relentless rise of exports from the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) and, in particular, China. Mu...

Until mid-November 2013 it was not possible to accurately assess the profile of South Africa’s agricultural trade. It was only at that date that the South African Revenue Service...

In recent papers tralac has written extensively on Lesotho and trade related issues. Sandrey (2015) confirmed that manufacturing and in particular the textiles and clothing sector ...

Despite increased global competition, the textile and clothing (T&C) industry is a very strategic sector for Southern Africa that has significant forward and backward linkages ...

In April 2016, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa launched “Transformative Industrial Policy for Africa”, a Special Report authored by University of Cambridge de...

The objective for this paper is to examine Chinese imports from Africa during 2015 and assess the extent to which falling global commodity prices have contributed to changes over m...

The South African Rand experienced an almost continual state of depreciation over the period 2011-2015, culminating in a massive risk premium shock to the currency, and an accelera...

Outside of South Africa there is little traditional manufacturing capacity in Sub-Saharan Africa that is able to make an impact in global export markets. Perhaps the only sector th...

Logistics is important, both in its own right and as a factor that facilitates trade and development. The most recent South African Logistics Survey (CSIR, 2014) found that th...