Thread by @Jim_Cornelius

Whenever anyone disputes the information I provide on this subject they always link me to the same half-dozen or so articles. Each one contains basic errors or misunderstandings.

Let's look at your links.

This is the first one. dpa-international.com/topic/urn:news…

So here's part of it. It talks of African nations importing basic foodstuffs that they could grow themselves. This is true, they do and they need to develop their own agriculture in these areas. But where do they import from? I'll show you.

I chose three African countries, South Africa, Ghana and Nigeria, (but I could look at another one if you nominate a country) and I looked at the cereal imports and where the come from for 2016 ( most recent). You get similar results if you drill down to maize, wheat and rice.

So for South Africa over 80% of cereal imports come from Argentina, Thailand
Mexico, Russia, India, USA and Brazil.

Biggest imports from the EU if from Germany as 2.7%

trademap.org/Country_SelPro…

Let's look at Ghana, over 85% comes from Vietnam, Canada, Thailand, India and Russia. 3.7% is not specified (Area Nes)

Biggest import from EU are France at 2.9%.

trademap.org/Country_SelPro…

Nigeria next.

86.8% of cereal imports come from USA, Russia, Canada, Australia and Thailand.

Biggest imports from EU are from Poland at 2.7%

trademap.org/Country_SelPro…

The vast bulk of cereal imports come from outside the EU.

What about other foodstuffs. Well we could look at anything you like, but I chose chicken and South Africa because that had been raised as an issue in the article.

Stats are patchy but I looked at frozen chicken. here it's more complex and I'm showing the last few years. As you can see Brazil typically send more chicken to South Africa than EU countries.

trademap.org/Country_SelPro…

It then talks about coffee. I've already dealt with coffee but it bears repeating. Virtually all African countries are exempt from tariffs on processed coffee.
No surprise to find they're quoting Calestous Juma.

An article by Calestous Juma. containing a fundamental error is is responsible for many of these inaccurate reports. I deal with it in details in this thread.

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Your 2nd and 3rd links are dead.

Your 4th link is another one I've seen many, many times, it again repeats the false claim of Caelstous Juma about coffee. The same applies for chocolate by the way. It specifically mentions Ghana.

Let's look at Ghana.

Ghana initialled an interim EPA in 2007.

Exports from Ghana to the EU have been tariff free since 1 Jan 2008.

For more detail about Ghana and it's trade history see this excellent paper. mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/66232/1/MPRA_p…

When the UK joined the EEC in 1973 it extended the EU's preferential market access for francophone ex-colonial countries to many of Britain's former colonies. Together these are known as ACP (Africa, Caribbean, Pacific) countries.

The WTO ruled against these preferences in 2000.

To cut a long story short, the USA objected to the EU giving preference to the ACP countries over South/Central American countries where US multi-nationals (Dole &Chiquita) has an interest in the export of tropical fruit, notably bananas. WTO ruled in USAs favour.

So the EU came up with Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA) which were compatible with WTO rules (specifically GATT Article XXIV) for free bilateral trade agreements.

Most African countries are now either on EPA, or have an exception to tariffs as I stated earlier.

I forgot to link to the source for the screenshot for Ghana earlier. Here: europa.eu/rapid/press-re…

Note Ghana ratified the EPA in 2016.

You might find an article about Kenya and tariffs being applied to their export of cut flowers. This tariff applied for 2 months in 2014. Otherwise Kenya has been on a zero tariff schedule since 1975.

If you can be bothered to read it, here's the explanation.

Following the UK's accession preferential tariff access to the EEC was extended to the less developed former British colonies. Collectively called the ACP (African, Caribbean, Pacific) acp.int/content/secret…

Under the 1975 Lomé Convention ACP countries were granted tariff free entry to the EEC market for all manufactured goods and many agricultural goods.

The ACP countries were not required to reciprocate. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lom%C3%A9…

So that means there was nothing to stop these countries imposing their own tariffs on agricultural imports. Which they do. In fact tariffs between African countries are very high indeed.

The ACP preference system came under threat when US companies Dole, Del Monte and Chiquita with large interests in fruit plantations (particularly bananas) in Latin America, objected to this preference. Latin American producers were subject to tariffs while ACP producers were not

The American companies complained that this was not a level playing field and a barrier to free trade. The USA lodged a complaint to the WTO and eventually the WTO ruled in the USA's favour.

theguardian.com/world/1999/mar…

So the EU had to come up with a new system which did not breach WTO rules concerning preferences.

The EU devised the Economic Partnership Agreements scheme (EPA) in the Cotonou Agreement in 2000.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotonou_A…

A waiver of tariffs for the ACP countries persisted till 2007/8 till EPAs could be formalised.

ictsd.org/bridges-news/b…

So in 2008 Kenya initialled (but did not sign or ratify) an Interim EPA in order to maintain its tariff free status with the EU.

eeas.europa.eu/archives/deleg…

EPAs are semi-reciprocal free trade agreements (compatible with WTO rules) offering full market access to the partner country into the EU markets with zero tariffs an quotas on their goods in exchange for partial liberalisation of the partner countries market (typically 80%).

The partner countries choose which sectors to protect from liberalisation and typically they choose agricultural products. For example this shows the sectors protected by ESA states.

From 2008 Kenya received the benefits of the EPA on an interim basis, but they did not sign the agreement as there was no consensus among African nations about this commitment.

In 2014 the EU lost patience with Kenya and other countries which had not signed. So they called time.

Kenya, unlike the other countries in a similar position was not one of the UN's Least Developed Countries. These other countries would have reverted to EBA (Everything but Arms) status which offered automatic unilateral tariff free access to all their good bar guns an ammunition.

Kenya, instead would revert to GSP status. GSP (Generalised System of Preference) is a 2nd tier trade preference scheme offering unilateral reduced tariffs to low to middle income countries.

An agreement on avoiding this was not reached in time and between 1 Oct and 24 Dec 2014 Kenya was placed on GSP tariff schedule.

trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/20…

But Kenya signed at the end of 2014, putting it back on zero tariffs again.

They finally ratified the EPA in 2016.

So, apologies for the number of tweets, but this issue keeps being misrepresented.

Indeed Shahmir Sanni the BeLeave/Cambridge Analytics whistleblower named the plight of African farmers t as one reason he supported the leave campaign.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/m…

So, had people understood this issue correctly before the referendum, it may very well have had a different result.