Informal cross - border trade and smuggling in Africa
نویسنده
چکیده
The low level and discrepancies of recorded intraAfrican trade flows have been noted for at least 30 years (Berg 1985; Yeats 1990). This situation has continued or even expanded despite structural adjustment programs involving trade liberalization and extensive integration schemes aiming to promote formal integration. There are some 30 regional blocs in Africa, and on average each of the 53 countries on the continent are members of four often overlapping groups (Yang and Gupta 2005; UNCTAD 2009). Yet official intraAfrican trade accounts for only about 10 percent of total African exports and imports, far below other regions of the world (Keane et al. 2010). Casual observation in the countries themselves, however, reveals that informal crossborder trade (ICBT) is thriving almost everywhere in Africa. There have been numerous case studies of ICBT in the last two decades, most by sociologists, anthropologists and political scientists rather than economists; Lesser and MoiséLeeman (2009) survey a few of these studies. These studies cover a great many border areas in Africa, including, among others: the Horn of Africa – Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya (Little 2005; Teka and Azeze 2002); Southern Africa – South Africa, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia, Mozambique (Ndlela 2006; Mijere 2009; Macamo 1999); Kenya–Uganda (AckellaOgutu 1997); Congo (MacGaffey 1991; Kabamba 2013); Uganda (Titeca 2009; Titeca and de Herdt 2010); Nigeria–Cameroon–Chad (Roitman 2004; Amin and Hoppe 2013); Benin–Togo–Niger–Nigeria (Igué and Soulé 1992; Azam 2007; Golub 2012; Hashim and Meagher 1999; Galtier and Tassou 1998); Senegal–The Gambia (Golub and Mbaye 2009); Ghana–Togo–Burkina Faso (Chalfin 2001); Sierra Leone (Pritchard and van den Boogaard 2013). Informal trade can involve two types of illegality, in the goods themselves (for example, narcotics) or in the manner of trading (evasion of customs duties and regulations). Both types of illegal trade occur in Africa. West Africa serves as an important locus for international trade by organized crime in narcotics, notably cocaine (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime 2013). Cocaine produced in South America is often transshipped to Europe via West Africa and increasingly methamphetamines are produced in Nigeria and exported to Europe, the Middle East and Asia. However, although most informal trade is illegal in the narrow sense that it is unreported and fails to comply with statutory tax rates and other regulations, the products involved are generally not in themselves illegal to trade or use. This chapter focuses on unreported trade of legal goods. Such trade in legal goods has varying degrees of illegality in terms of its intentions and compliance with tax and regulatory statutes. Four kinds of unrecorded crossborder trade in legal goods can be distinguished.
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تاریخ انتشار 2015