Enabling African Trade: Findings from the Enabling Trade Index

African countries have registered high growth rates in the past 10 years and have weathered the global economic crisis rather favorably compared with other emerging economies. Yet, as discussed in Chapter 1.1, the level of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita and the pace of GDP growth have not reached levels found in other regions, such as developing Asia. From 2002 to 2012, GDP growth in developing Asia was on average 8.5 percent, while sub-Saharan Africa experienced growth rates of 5.7 percent. 1 A key difference between these two regions is their participation in global trade and investment flows. While trade in developing Asia more than doubled between 1995 and 2010, trade in sub-Saharan Africa over the same period remained at below 2 percent of total world trade. 2 Two distinct observation