A joint ECDPM-ICTSD monthly publication on the major issues faced by all African and ACP countries in their international trade negotiations at the WTO and with the EU in the context of the Cotonou Agreement.

African and ACP countries face trade negotiations over the next years on several fronts simultaneously, including: on the new WTO Round launched in Doha, on new trading arrangements under the Cotonou Agreement between the ACP and the EU, and on trade commitments within economic groupings in their own region . The major challenge for these countries consists in taking advantage of the opportunities while avoiding drawbacks associated with these closely interlinked negotiations. This requires clear trade policy strategies framed in long-term sustainable development objectives. In practice however, negotiating capacity is scarce for complex trade arrangements, national strategies are often undefined and sometimes potentially conflicting among members. In addition, Geneva-based negotiators may not aware of developments at the regional and plurilateral levels and inter-ministerial co-ordination remains desperately poor.

As a contribution to this process, the purpose of the Trade Negotiations Insight series is to build bridges between developments on these different fronts and provide information and context setting analysis, with the ultimate goal of making sense of multiple choices in trade negotiations. In the pursuit of this objective, the TNI intends to communicate in a non-technical manner the latest results of qualitative and quantitative assessments of trade policies in relation to negotiations and provide a perspective and background explanation on forthcoming topical trade issues at stake.

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