Recently accelerating Asian trade and investment in Africa hold great promise for Africa’s economic growth and development—provided certain policy reforms on both continents are implemented. This is a central finding of a new book, Africa’s Silk Road: China and India’s New Economic Frontier .

The author of the book, World Bank Economic Adviser Harry Broadman, says that skyrocketing Asian trade and investment in Africa is part of a global trend towards rapidly growing South-South commerce among developing countries.

Africa’s Silk Road provides, for the first time, systematic empirical evidence on how the two emerging economic giants of Asia— China and India—now stand at the crossroads of the explosion of African-Asian trade and investment.

Broadman surveyed 450 firms, including Chinese and Indian companies, operating in four African countries—South Africa, Tanzania, Ghana, and Senegal—and developed in-depth business case studies in the field of additional 16 Chinese and Indian firms in Africa. Africa's Silk Road offers original firm-level data on the African continent of Chinese and Indian firms operating there.

Download Africa's Silk Road: China and India's New Economic Frontier

Pdf format, 5.1mb, 420pages. World Bank Publications, February 2007.

Africa's Silk Road World Bank Official Website

The study details a series of reforms that should be undertaken by all the countries:

• “At-the-border” reforms, such as elimination of China and India’s escalating tariffs on Africa’s leading exports; and elimination of Africa’s tariffs on certain inputs that make its own exports uncompetitive.
• “Behind-the-border” reforms in Africa, to unleash competitive market forces, strengthen its basic market institutions, and improve governance.
• “Between-the-border” improvements in trade facilitation infrastructure and institutions to decrease transactions costs, such as customs administration, transport and communications.
• Reforms that leverage linkages between investment and trade to allow African businesses’ participation in modern global production-sharing networks generated by Chinese and Indian investments in Africa.

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