Economic Integration and Nigeria Signature on the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (Published)
The paper looked at the expected gains for our country applying proper trade cost analysis between peer African nations and Nigeria. Using content analysis as our methodology on a data format by World Development Indicators and World Integrated Trade Solutions, the result showed that the tariff structure in Nigeria is on the very high side visa vice her contemporary trade rivals in Africa. Again, it is been observed that Nigeria was comparatively disadvantaged in the region on the ease of doing business ranking among her peers. Added to this problem is Nigeria’s moncultural export based economy which had little or no reasonable market share in the continent. Also compounding the problem is the fact that trade enhancing infrastructures, such as roads and maritime facilities are grossly inadequate given African standards. With these structural handicaps, Nigeria is not likely to maximize the envisioned benefits of an expanded market as enshrined in the AfCFTA agreement. So we recommend that the Federal Government of Nigeria should be cautious and decline from vigorous commitments on the AfCFTA deal. However, we advise that priority should be given to infrastructural development and other trade enhancing factors. Vigorous attempts should be made at diversifying the economy and improve the ease of doing business status of the country to enable her optimize the potential benefits of AfCFTA agreement in the near future.
Keywords: Continental free trade area, International trade cost, Trade cost, free trade