 Thank you, Nicky. I have a power point presentation. I'll open up just to give a bit of context This research was conducted about a year ago, and I am not as familiar with the content to be able to present it without Following sort of script and outline. So I will be doing that to maintain time and Apologize for that in advance So much of the previous panels During this conference have spoken about specific strategies for economic development and industrialization in sub-Saharan Africa or they focused on market integration initiatives and my presentation focuses in this area and Specifically I analyze the impact of regional trade agreements on economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa and my case study is on ECOWAS Due to time constraints I will focus on the findings from the case study and I'll present less on the generic findings about regional trade agreements and their impact on growth so really briefly to Outline what I'll be presenting first is just introduction to the research Very briefly the theory that goes behind why these regional trade agreements are happening a Background on the rationale and drawbacks of these RTAs is what they're also called and then I get into more in-depth the case study on ECOWAS and Lastly if there's some time a bit of a discussion about what these findings mean So regional trade agreements RTAs and their outcomes for developmental purposes have puzzled economists and governments motivating a considerable literature on their supposed benefits and drawbacks At the same time the number of RTAs in sub-Saharan Africa has exploded a proliferation as you see in this map and called by the IMF and UN ECA as Africa's spaghetti bowl of RTAs and overlapping memberships between different RTAs Upon closer inspection these agreements take on various forms based on a number of variables including depth of integration The types of member countries there are reciprocal or unilateral application of trade liberalization policies And the growing number and diversity and complexity of these RTAs suggests the importance for impact assessments to analyze broadly Taking into account the context of other RTAs country-level differences and the region's position in the global economy within this context my Paper takes on a critical engagement on the theory and empirical evidence within this debate for both intra-african and north-south RTAs to apply to the case study of Ekoas the second side the economic community of West African states I Drive two main themes from this analysis first. I illustrate the methodological difficulties of impact assessments that aim to identify causal mechanisms of growth that result from RTAs in the context of these overlapping Arrangements Second it distinguishes between RTA impact on increasing trade and Increasing growth for which the literature has proved unsuccessful in substantiating the link to the ladder Really quickly regional create regional trade agreements are a policy tool To promote free trade which in turn is suggested to promote economic developments today We know I think I usually fall into the trap of beating a dead horse But I think today we've realized that these market liberalization agendas cannot be a blind endeavor and that They should be used strategically with prudent state involvement in the economy to direct a dynamic comparative advantage Not a static one that can drive National economies up the value chain. So those are just some broad critiques of the the original free trade Theories So now with these basics RTAs are a policy tool to facilitate free trade There are a number of theories and concepts used to understand the impact of RTAs on increases in trade However, assessing the aggregate impacts of RTAs It's just said that it's an it's an ambiguous impact what it really comes down to is Whether more trade was created rather than diverted as a result of an RTA being instituted Very briefly to review the rationale and the drawbacks and strengths and weaknesses for our Well, RIAs are what I are what I use as a term within Sub-Saharan Africa It's so it's a regional integration agreement and they're used this term is used because usually these are agreements within neighboring countries One of the biggest strengths of an RIA is that it does bring together a group of countries Some of which are landlocked and some which are coastal countries which give market access to the landlocked countries to build export out of their region Some of the issues though that William did already discuss are that there are behind the behind the border or non-tariff barriers to trade including infrastructure issues Which I don't need to review and Also, there are other issues That arise from the incomplete implementation of these RIAs that result from Obstructed there are obstructed by weak state capacities fears of losing state sovereignty and the complexity of states being party to multiple overlapping RIAs Lastly There has been evidence within RIAs that RIAs that are among lower income countries have Sometimes the impact of having income divergence between the higher income parties of that RA and the lower income parties of that RA and That was said to be due to lacking complementarity of factors of production My brief review of the strengths and weaknesses of RAs in sub-Saharan Africa Indicate that the linear progress process of market integration has been inefficient and or insufficient For the region while the linear model focuses on tariffs and border barriers It misses the main impediments for successful intra African trade such as behind the border issues um Unktad proposed a more holistic strategy called developmental regionalism and we've already been discussing this earlier panels today And they describe this as sequence trade liberalization Alongside conscious and planned policy actions aimed at building productive capacities of member countries and promoting industrial restructuring Including alleviating supply side constraints by using industrial policy Development corridors special economic zones and regional value chains In this way unktad supports an understanding of the concept of economic growth that I propose for my own analysis As a sustainable and inclusive growth following from structural transformation that can offer Sub-Saharan Africa a more substantive role in the global economy So therefore when I'm doing my analysis, I do not merely I Characterized gross growth as GDP figures, but I include other figures That I will be discussing later including poverty inequality export structure and inter-regional trade share I will not discuss in depth the Weaknesses and limitations and strengths of the north-south arrangements, but just know that within ECOWAS There are also north-south arrangements with the EU and the the US that are impacting how ECOWAS has growth impacts And I can get into that into the presentation of the fields of the case study findings So very briefly ECOWAS is a regional arrangement of 15 states in West Africa Initiated in 1975 to promote economic and political integration through linear integration based on the EU model While ECOWAS has not yet accomplished most of its integration goals in the treaty some progress has been made including regional conflict prevention and peace building And some describe it describe this as a free trade area that has significantly eliminated Tariff barriers and allowed for the free movement of citizens, but some people still disagree about the FTA designation for ECOWAS in terms of composition ECOWAS is politically and economically dominated by Nigeria Constituting nearly half the population and GDP of all ECOWAS states additionally ECOWAS ECOWAS's makeup is characteristically divided between landlock Sahelian countries and more human coastal countries then divided again between two sub RIAs One is francophone countries in a currency union called WAEMU with a common currency of the Sifa and another anglophone block called The West African monetary zone WAMZ They don't have a common currency within that zone yet, but that was a proposal The West African region mainly exports a limited range of agricultural commodities and most economies are characterized as a net oil Importers except for Nigeria, of course the World Bank says that this kind of makeup Exacerbates trade policy as fluctuations and oil prices on the import side are often combined with commodity price shocks on the export side Very briefly my case study methods. I did this as a disclaimer. This is not using a gravity model or regression analysis Given the definition I give to growth is being very multidimensional and comprehensive it would be it would be a Something new in the literature to be able to do a model such as those with these Definitions of growth, but what I do Use our economic econometric data over time on measures of GDP poverty inequality Export structure and share in the global economy From various sources to show how ECOWAS's countries have been able to Deliver on economic growth over the period Very quickly from the literature ECOWAS's impact on growth has always been elusive in literature and also There have been more recent articles that have shown that ECOWAS has had a impact on increases in trade and then other sites that show that increases in trade do have a Expand explanatory power on increases in GDP However, those studies don't attribute the increases in trade or GDP to ECOWAS So there are some distinctions between those findings of what I'm trying to show here Let's get this okay, so to go over the the meat of the presentation and the work that went into this paper is a statistical analysis Really briefly to frame these stats I use stats on a range of indicators to offer a deeper analysis of ECOWAS's effects on growth from the available data Four aspects of this paper's definition of growth have been quantified including GDP figures Which is a GDP per capita and GDP growth rates and then increasing role in the global economy Which I use ECOWAS's GDP as a share of world GDP And then sustainable growth via structural Transformation I use the share of exports by product grouping including higher value added products manufacturers are an example of those and then inclusive growth So I use the World Bank's poverty and inequality their variables This is graph one and as you can see it demonstrates a share of trade between ECOWAS members Shown by the inter-regional trade share and the purple dashed line So this line as you can see it goes from 1970 to 2010. It's fluctuated considerably but it has Behaved inversely with the regional GDP per capita meaning that the share of inter-regional trade increased during the 18 1980 to 2000 growth slump, but decreased after 2004 when growth in terms of GDP Increased I assume this is likely indication of the region's dependence on commodity export prices Which dominate its international trade and we're driven by this commodity supercycle Graph 2 I'm not going to review because I'm still questioning How to interpret it? Which maybe I can get some of your help on or questions a graph 3 Shows the absolute value of intra intra regional trade And I have sub-Saharan Africa in the darkest block at the bottom and on top of that is within ECOWAS And on top of that is within WAMU, which is a part of ECOWAS So focusing on ECOWAS, which is the blocks of purple This data shown in the in these bars Presents an optimistic narrative that the absolute value of intro ECOWAS trade has increased substantially in the 2000s however the percent as shown by the purple dashed line and the and with the boxes Has shown that the share or the percent of inter-regional ECOWAS trade has decreased slightly over the past 20 years This was showing that ECOWAS has not substantially facilitated regional trade Inter-regional trade At the same time this graph 4 shows that ECOWAS exports have become more entrenched in the primary commodities vis-a-vis all forms of manufactured goods And this is comparing the light purple bars for primary commodities to the small dark purple bars for manufactured goods at the top If structural transformation is a condition for growth these findings present a negative outlook But on the other hand as you can see from the dashed lines. This is breaking up these manufacturers into different levels of Value added and the highest value added under the high skill and high technology intensive manufacturers Has increased the most but this is a very small proportion of the economy. So it doesn't demonstrate a whole lot Additionally while the share of GDP from manufacturers has remained low and stable in many West African countries from 2004 to 2012 graph 5 here illustrates the Significantly higher and wide-ranging changes in the contribution from the services sector in different countries Shown in the dashed lines. This may highlight a structural transformation in countries like Ghana and Liberia driven Not by industrialization, but by informality which according to McMillan et al. 2013 can negatively affect growth due to shifting labor from high to low productivity sectors and increasing unemployment in the last section of the paper I Do case studies of eight countries and echo us On various variables of GDP per capita. Actually all the variables. I'd already discussed And so these two this is an example of one of the eight case studies This is Burkina Faso and I split the indicators into two graphs one showing the GDP per capita and And growth the growth rate and then the poverty inequality variables on the other side So when you see increases on the red graph, it's a good thing for GDP and when you see decreases on the other side It's it's they're saying that that's a good thing. It's decreasing poverty poverty head counts and inequality rates In the past two decades GDP per capita has increased substantially Along with high GDP growth rates for most echo us countries However, when any quality however when inequality variables and poverty are included in these profiles Growth has been less uniform Examples such as Nigeria and Cote d'Avore indicate increasing inequality and poverty head counts Well in Ghana and Senegal inequality levels remain stable and both the poverty head counts and depth of poverty decreased And only countries and the only countries with reductions in inequality We're also those with the lowest GDP per capita Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali, and Niger are the examples To offer a better grasp of what these intra echo us findings mean for growth I do go into the paper. I don't have much time left anymore, and I'm going over But I do contextualize these findings within the other arrangements such as a north-south agreements Which is the everything but arms agreement with the EU moving into the EPA agreements and then the US agreements The African Growth and Opportunity Act So overall I can conclude By saying that Growth has been very elusive in the literature But regardless showing that these findings showing these findings to you today do demonstrate That the growth that I'm describing an inclusive and sustainable growth and echo us has not been achieved Regardless of echo us and so you can't necessarily blame it on the agreement or lack of implementation necessarily But there's definitely a need for a more comprehensive approach to regional integration And I think some of the suggestions we've had from the other panels of very nicely put forward some Some strategies for that. So thank you for your time and I can address any questions at the end of the panel. Thank you