The nexus of transport connectivity and infrastructure with trade growth in the ECOWAS region.

Abstract

The impact of transport connectivity and infrastructure on trade and overall economic development in the West African region cannot be over emphasized. Generally, it has been established that poor transportation systems have negative knock-on effects on the economies of countries. Thus, this study identifies and discussed the barriers and facilitators regarding transport connectivity，performance of trade and overall economic development of member countries of the ECOWAS region. We develop a gravity model to assess the impact of transport connectivity and infrastructure on bilateral and intra-regional trade across the study region. Also, multilateral trade resistance (MTR) terms are included in the modelling structure as a variable to capture the comparative trade cost between transacting partner economies. The outcome of the analysis indicates a positive connection between transport connectivity and infrastructure along with international and intra-regional trade. This implies that transport connectivity and infrastructure impact the overall growth and performance of trade in the ECOWAS region and the level of impact is statistically significant. The analysis show that including a rail connection between trading country partners in the study area will result in an average upsurge of trade performance by 3.5 per cent. Similarly, the results also prove that a 10 per cent decrease in the distance of sea and air upsurges trade by 0.52 per cent and 0.31 per cent, respectively. Likewise, improving the rail and road density of the trading partner countries ranked as the second factor that contributes greatly to improving trade performance in the study area. Similarly, the performance of logistics (such as LPI) indicates a substantial and comparatively robust impact on the flow of international and intra-regional trades.

Key words: ECOWAS, MTR, LPI, LSCI, transport connectivity, transport infrastructure, gravity model