Capacity Building for Pro-Poor Trade

The present study is a paper commissioned for the 2005 Human Development Report. It describes and evaluates the use of trade related development assistance (TRDA) in three sectors in Africa, namely Ghanian pineapples, Kenyan horticulture and Senegalese fish. Furthermore, it discusses broader lessons on TRDA included in the existing stock of evaluations of various donor programmes in the field of TRDA in Africa and globally. The study evaluates the diagnosis performed by donors and agencies involved in TRDA activities as well as the response to that diagnosis. Diagnosis is understood as the identification of the needs of TRDA and response is interpreted as how the diagnosis results in TRDA supply. Given the limited resources available for the study, issues like effectiveness and efficiency of specific TRDA efforts in the three case studies are not the subject of any rigorous analysis and are touched upon only in passing. The structure of the paper is the following. Section 2 provides a short overview of the general problems associated with TRDA. African supply capacity problems is the central focus of the paper, so an overview of these are given in section 3. Section 4 contains the case studies. For each case study, the development of the industry under scrutiny is sketched out and the main TRDA activities are described. Finally, section 5 draws the conclusions on the role that TRDA have played in the three cases in particular and the role it can and should play in Africa in general.