Pathways to African Export Sustainability

This report provides tentative leads
toward such policy prescriptions, based on an overview of
the empirical evidence. Chapter one sets the stage by
putting Africa's export-survival performance into
perspective and proposing a framework that will guide the
interpretation of empirical evidence throughout the report.
Chapter two covers country-level determinants of export
sustainability at origin and destination, including the
exporting country's business environment. Chapter three
explores some of the firm-level evidence on what drives
export sustainability, including uncertainty, incomplete
contracts, learning, and networks. Finally, chapter four
offers tentative policy implications. The main conclusions
from this overview of the causes of Africa's low export
sustainability should be taken with caution both because of
the complexity of the issue and because of the very
fragmentary evidence on which the overview is based. The
author should be more cautious in drawing policy
implications, as hasty policy prescriptions are the most
common trap into which reports of this kind can fall. A
first, solid conclusion is that the author needs substantial
additional work on the nature and causes of low export
survival rates in developing countries to determine the path
to high export sustainability.