Evaluation of West Africa trade-related projects

When discussing the latter projects in this report, they are collectively referred to as E/ATP, and all three projects conducted a tremendous amount of training and capacity building to build commodity associations and help individual companies and producer organizations improve their performance and exports. The challenges addressed, such as nontariff barriers to free trade in Africa, transport impediments, the severe shortage of credit for agribusiness, and marketing and policy issues were substantial and the projects undertook short-term and medium-term activities that met those challenges and in the process built capacity for the future and expanded trade.The Trade Hub, under the current evaluation period (2007-2011) achieved a number of successes, directly facilitating $178 million of private sector exports by small companies for non-traditional exports to America and Europe. E/ATP launched in 2009, specifically dealt with very small producers and their production and marketing organizations achieving success in expanding marketing information and contacts, introducing technological improvements, and building capacity in key producer and trader organizations, in a short time frame. Regional trade registered in these commodities by the trade monitoring system that E/ATP set up reached $392 million in 2009/10 including cattle ($293 million), onions ($44 million), maize ($15 million), sorghum ($13.4 million), millet ($12.9 million), parboiled rice ($7.7 million), and poultry day-old chicks ($6.8 million).