Building Africa’s Supply Capacities And Competitiveness Through Aid For Trade

This chapter discusses the Aid for Trade (AfT) initiative and its location in dealing with Africa’s trade challenges1. The AfT is evolving towards being a core area within the broad development finance architecture. Essentially, the AfT idea as will be seen in this chapter borders on ring-fenced resources targeted to helping developing countries integration into the global trading system. This paper starts with a discussion of the trade challenges that Africa faces, both internally and externally. These challenges require a response such as that envisaged in the AfT as can be seen from its rationale and its scope which are discussed in this chapter.