VI FELLOWSHIPS FOR UCAD SCHOLARS: A brief statement of objectives and outcome

VI FELLOWSHIPS FOR UCAD SCHOLARS: A brief statement of objectives and outcome By Ahmadou Aly MBAYE Director of CREA, and VI Coordinator at UCAD

Background • Three applications made to the VI by UCAD • Regional training workshop on commodities • Research funding for cge modeling of the relationship between trade and poverty • Fellowship for UCAD faculty members • We eventually got the workshop and two fellowship for UCAD: Sané and Diop

THE OBJECTIVES • The objectives were twofold: about research and about teaching • About Teaching: to gather as much as possible teaching materials and acquaintance with software programs to support the two professional masters we have launched on commodities and trade policy • About Research: implementing two research proposals: on the determinants of investments and the reaction of poultry production to trade liberalization

The outcome about teaching • They complemented the teaching materials already available on the VI website and sent to member institutions • They worked on developing case studies using INFOCOMM • They worked on developing case studies using TRAINS

The case studies using INFOCOMM • It is a dataset developed by UNCTAD on a variety of commodities, and an important set of information related to this kind of products, • A case study on cotton has been developped using this tool, • It allowed to identify different challenges facing cotton production in Africa, as regards market segmentation, subsidies and the like, and ways for policy makers to address them.

The case studies using TRAINS • It is an electronic data set containing information regarding tariff and non tariff barriers as well as various statistics about trade. • Various exercises of simulation about trade creation effects and welfare effects of different scenarios of tariff protection in dev elopped countries have been developed using TRAINS in the WITS package. • The objective of which was to familiarize Sané and Diop with this tools

The outcome about research • The objective was not to have the proposals that had been sent to VI completed during the fellowship period • The objective was rather to discuss with people sharing the same research interest about the issues at point and to complete data collection, notably in their international aspects.

First proposal: how does the Senegalese avian sector did react to trade liberalization? • In 2000, we set up a CET in WAEMU countries, which dramatically reduced tariffs in these countries; in the avian sector, average tariff was divided by 2, between 98 and 2001. • In the same time, poultry imports raised from 500 to 16000 metric tons. • How do both variables correlates and what policies should be implemented to ease the crisis of the avian sector in Senegal? • The challenge: poultry products have become highly segmented; which completely disrupts the domestic organization of the sector following liberalization

Second proposal: The determinants of FDI in WAEMU countries • The proportion of total FDI to developing countries, going to WAEMU countries are minuscule, • Several attempts to address this issues: stabilization policies, SAP, regulatory framework for businesses, and investment climate assessments, • In this proposal, the objective is to grasp the impediments to FDI inflows in West Africa

Thank you very much for attention

VI FELLOWSHIPS FOR UCAD SCHOLARS: A brief statement of objectives and outcome