Impact of aid for trade on the trade performance of the West African Economic and Monetary Union: Empirical analysis (2005- 2014)

Launched in 2005, aid for trade aims to help developing countries, and particularly least developed countries' trade. Many developing countries face a range of supply-side and trade- related infrastructure obstacles which constrains their ability to engage in international trade. The objective of this thesis is to analysis the effectiveness of aid for trade in term of export performance for some recipient countries members of the West African Economic and Monetary Union. Using data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development /Credit Reporting System, from the World Development Indicators database and from Heritage.org we conduct panel data estimation for a sample of 8 countries such as Benin, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo for the period 2005- 2014. We divide aid for trade in two categories (aid for trade capacity and aid for economic infrastructure). We find that aid for trade has an overall positive and significant impact on exports value. This effect seems to be entirely driven by aid to productive capacity, while the other main category of aid for trade, aid to economic infrastructure, has no discernible effect on exports. Our analysis leads us to conclude that the sectors that receive the less aid to productive capacity are those which provide the biggest part in recipient's exportation.