Regional Capacity Building Workshop to Enhance Services Exports (Africa)

White Sands Hotel, Mombasa, Kenya, 7-9 June 2011

Background

Over the last 6 years, the Trade Section of Commonwealth Secretariat’s Special Advisory Services Division (SASD) has supported 18 Member States to formulate strategies aimed at enhancing export of professional services. *The countries include 8 in the Caribbean; 6 in Africa; 4 in Europe and Asia. In addition, the Section has in the past organised 2 conferences to provide a platform for Member States to learn, network and share experiences in 2008 (Malaysia) and 2010 (Mauritius). Further, the Trade Section has recently embarked on a series of regional workshops to support Member countries address implementation related issues.  The first workshop for the Caribbean region was held in St. Kitts and Nevis in November 2010. This workshop, for Africa, was the second in the series. It was co-hosted by the Government of Kenya through the Ministry of Trade and was open to all Member States in Africa.

The Trade Section has worked on various aspects of professional services in Africa. Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria and Malawi have been assisted to explore the export potential of professional services and to develop Strategic Plans to exploit them. A roadmap was developed to revitalise the efforts of Mauritius to improve competiveness in selected services. In addition, preparatory work is underway to support Mauritius to improve the measurement of services trade. More recently, the Commonwealth Secretariat is supporting Uganda to maximise the benefits of exporting the country’s university education. In collaboration with the WTO Secretariat and the IMF, the Secretariat held a training and capacity building workshop to improve services trade statistics for the Member States of COMESA. A similar initiative is planned for West Africa.

The workshop was held against the backdrop of several key developments including:
a. The impact of the recession and financial crisis in the leading target export markets
b. The missed deadlines in the Doha Development Agenda and the growing number of regional and bilateral negotiations including the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA); the evolution of the EAC Customs Union into a common market; efforts to liberalise intra-regional trade in both COMESA and SADC.
c. The emergence of Asia as a strong global player.
d. The changing roles of national and regional, public and private sector organisations involved in promoting services, including some countries’ initiatives to form umbrella organisations for service providers.

* Professional services comprises all exportable services as outlined in the WTO GATS classification, with the exception of  tourism

Final Report

Regional Capacity Building Workshop to Enhance Services Exports (Africa) Mombasa Workshop Report

Meeting Documents

Comesa Committee Services Report

Comesa Services Program

List of Participants

Opening Statement

Opening statement - Commonwealth Secretariat

Workshop Programme

Presentations

APSEA-apex organisations in services

Country Paper- Ghana

Country Paper- Kenya

Country Paper- Malawi

Country paper-Uganda

Country paper-Nigeria June 2011

Developing services focus Nigeria

Effective Advocacy For Services - Babajide Sodipo

Enterprise Mauritius-Leveraging IT to Export Business Services (8June2011)

Exporting Professional Services (Mauritius)

Exporting services- Nigeria

Exporting services-Kenya

Nigeria entertainment

Prospects for professional services in S. Africa

Strengthening service providers- Ghana

Workshop overview

World trade in services