Trade in services: A niche for export diversification in Africa

African exports remain concentrated in a narrow range of commodities, with, however, some level of export diversification in a few African countries during the past decade. The role of services in enhancing the diversity and quality of manufactured goods and in facilitating this process at the regional level becomes clearer when the linkages of services as inputs in the production and export of manufactured goods and commodities are considered. This chapter examines the level of services development and trade in Africa to assess its impact on diversification. The latter is premised on the assumption that the higher the development of the services sector as reflected by diversity and quality of the traded services, the better the access to competitive key services inputs by domestic firms (Hoekman and Shingal, 2020).

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