Trade and sustainability: Three decades of change across Africa

ABSTRACT

Macro-level sustainability indicators have declined for African countries over the last three decades both in absolute terms and relative to non-African countries. Over these same years, trade relations for African exporters have changed significantly in terms of products exported as well as trade partners involved. In this paper, we explore several indicators that may link these changes in trade to the decline in sustainable development across Africa. We create a novel longitudinal dataset that combines specific configurations of products exported to different types of trade partners with country-level sustainability outcomes. We use time series models to identify which of these indicators are significantly associated with sustainability for African countries and compare those to the predominant viewpoints of African development such as the natural resource curse and the call for greater African self-reliance. We find an interesting set of non-results that contradict several common viewpoints, but we find a significant negative association between intra-African supply chain development and lower sustainability. Our results support firm-state development planning by identifying sector-partner configurations linked to sustainability outcomes across Africa as well as future firm-level work to consider how firms headquartered outside of developing countries may address sustainability.

KEYWORDS:

• sustainability
• global trade
• value chains

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Christopher B. Yenkey

Christopher B. Yenkey is an associate professor in the Sonoco International Business Department at the University of South Carolina Darla Moore School of Business and a core faculty member of the Rule of Law Collaborative at the University of South Carolina School of Law. His research extends sociological theories of social relationships, segregation and inter-group trust into the analysis of misconduct and market development. He currently serves as an associate editor at Management Science, a consulting editor at American Journal of Sociology, and is a member of the editorial board at Administrative Science Quarterly.

Nathaniel R. Hill

Nathaniel R. Hill is a PhD student in the Sonoco International Business Department at the University of South Carolina Darla Moore School of Business. His background and work experience include almost a decade in the financial inclusion sector, working with microfinance banks in sub-Saharan Africa, including two years in the field in the Republic of Congo. His research interests include entrepreneurship, financial inclusion, sustainability and the scaling of microenterprises in the developing context.