Exploring non-tariff barriers inhibiting indigenous African SMEs’ intra-African trade and internationalisation within Sub-Saharan Africa: A focus on Ghanaian SMEs exporting to Nigeria.

Abstract: The continent is currently, the world’s large free trade area with a 1.2-billion-person marketwhich is expected to double by 2050 is a substantial domestic market with significantopportunities for economic growth. This suggests that promoting intra-African trade (i.e.African countries trading among themselves) will provide businesses within the continentwith opportunities for sustained growth, enhance export competitiveness, contribute toeconomic diversification and reduce vulnerability to global shocks. However, despite thenumerous benefits of intra-African trade, intra-African trade, which has long beenrecognised as Africa’s answer to overcoming its economic challenges remained low. Thisnotwithstanding the several efforts including formulation of numerous trade agreement overthe years. The low intra-African trade, according to scholars is attributable to the lowinvolvement of SMEs mainly due challenges which are mostly non-tariff nature(Adebamge, 2019; Boso et al., 2016). This suggest that active participation of SMEs in theintra-African trade is important to the success of trade within the continent. Despite theimportance and recognition of the role of SMEs, particularly indigenous SMEs in thesuccess of intra-trade within the continent, limited attention has been given to unique non-tariff barriers impeding or preventing indigenous African SMEs from participating in tradewithin the continent. Therefore, the current study seeks to examine non-tariff barriersinhibiting indigenous African SMEs’ intra-African trade and internationalisation withinSub-Saharan Africa with a focus on Ghana’s indigenous SMEs exporting to Nigeria.Qualitative data from nine (9) owners of indigenous Ghanaian SMEs was collected usinginterview guide and analyzed thematically.The result of the study has revealed eight major non-tariff barriers impeding indigenousAfrican SMEs in Ghana from effectively participating in trade with neighbouring Africanscountries, particularly with Nigeria. The non-tariff barriers include lack of interest inproducts with African origin, long administrative custom procedures requiring long list ofdocuments, congestion at the ports as a result of inefficient bureaucracies, which usuallyleads to long delays, extortion, corruption, and sexual harassment by custom officials.Others include many roadblocks (border checkpoints) and regional differences in cross-border trade policies, lack of harmony between regulations on rules of origin, stringent localcontent requirements and technological challenges. The implications for policy and practiceis discussed in details in the thesis.