Duty-Free Access to China Won’t be a Quick Fix for Africa’s Export Problem

A worker at Sunripe factory in Limuru Town, Kiambu County, Kenya, arranges avocados on August 2, 2022. Image via Xinhua.

There’s been a lot of excitement this week in anticipation of tomorrow’s start of duty-free access into the Chinese market for 53 African countries. By any measure, this is a big deal, particularly in this new protectionist era when more trade walls are going up then coming down.

It’s also important, though, to keep expectations in check about how much impact this new trading privilege will have on African exporters.

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by Eric Olander

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