Economic obstacles to expanding intra-African trade

The paper extends the gravity model to examine the impact of infrastructure availability, economic policy, and internal political tensions on intra-African trade. To highlight specific obstacles hampering such a trade, bilateral trade between Africa and developed countries is also analyzed. The results show that, besides traditional gravity variables, poor infrastructure, economic policy mismanagement, and internal political tensions have a negative impact on trade among African countries. Except for political tensions, the identified obstacles are specific to intra-African trade, since they have no impact on African trade with developed countries. (C) 2004 Published by Elsevier Ltd..