Aid for Trade

November 29, 2022 - Aik Hoe Lim

Trade and international trade cooperation as a tool for LDCs to adapt to climate change

LDCs need support to tackle the climate crisis to safeguard and further advance the hard-earned improvements in incomes, education and health achieved over the past decades. To successfully mitigate and adapt to climate change, LDCs have to address several challenges and strengthen their policy frameworks. Not only do they need to enhance the climate-resilience of their trade-related infrastructure but also to improve their digital connectivity. The latter will play a key role in addressing information asymmetries and broadening the reach of early warning systems.

November 22, 2022 - Sonam P. Wangdi

LDCs need to be rewarded for their low emissions through better trade deals

Countries with high environmental credentials like Bhutan should be supported to trade with an automatic recognition and prioritization of their exports as clean and green. This will be a big boost to build productive capacity and help increase climate and trade ambition.

November 08, 2022 - Ratnakar Adhikari

Aid for trade should be a catalyst for climate finance

While leveraging AFT to mobilize climate finance is an imperative for LDCs, this cannot be achieved without improved government-wide coordination, policy reforms to improve business environments, capacity building to attract and retain investment as well as contribution of resources and expertise to mobilize additional funding. Such an approach, while facilitating collective engagement to unleash the power of partnership, can make a difference to ensure that climate change adaptation and mitigation needs of LDCs are adequately funded.

August 09, 2022 - Annette Mutaawe Ssemuwemba

Importance of building evidence for gender-sensitive trade policies

Building evidence does not only happen through research and analysis; it also comes from sharing experiences. For example, EIF support has been directed to sectors in which women are predominantly engaged, so female-owned businesses can expand and access new regional and global markets. Responses to the M&E exercise indicate a wide recognition that these efforts result in strengthening women’s economic and financial independence.

August 02, 2022 - Carolyn Deere Birkbeck

How can we harness aid for trade for a just transition to sustainable trade?

In 2022, WTO members have the opportunity to move forward on an aid for trade agenda that supports LDCs to tackle pressing challenges at the intersection of trade and sustainability. Given the massive trade-related challenges facing LDCs, the huge gap between needs and available support for a just transition to sustainable trade, and the urgency, scale, and impact of intersecting environmental crises in LDCs, mobilizing additional resources, investments, and partnerships is vital.

July 26, 2022 - Michael Roberts, Iljir Baftijari

6 things to know about Aid for Trade

Trade continues to play an important driving force not just of economic growth, but also poverty alleviation. Recognizing the role that trade can play in development, the WTO Aid-for-Trade Initiative seeks to mobilize resources to address trade-related constraints identified by developing and least-developed countries. But against the backdrop of multiple crises affecting the world economy, this task is challenging.

July 19, 2022 - Kati Suominen

It's time for public-private partnerships to drive digital trade in the most vulnerable nations

Unlike in 2013, PPPs are today widely embraced as a vehicle to promote digital trade. Now, they need to be used in places where they have been scarcer, such as the LDCs.

July 12, 2022 - Dr Jack Barrie and Dr Patrick Schröder

The role of WTO Aid for Trade in actualizing an inclusive circular economy

The Aid for Trade initiative could also become an important platform to encourage collaboration between donor and recipient countries on shared circular economy trade related opportunities and challenges going forward.

June 14, 2022 - Fanan Biem

Beyond ODA and Aid for Trade: The critical value of alternative trade funding

The Enhanced Integrated Framework has remained a key conduit for both channelling and leveraging wider Aid for Trade resources to the LDCs over the past decade but also has the mandate to support LDCs expand their trade funding base.

June 07, 2022 - Mahesh Sugathan

Plastic pollution: Can aid for trade help least developed countries tackle this crisis?

LDCs have to deal with millions of tonnes of plastic products imported each year, including products with embedded plastics and with associated plastic packaging.

March 08, 2022 - Annette Ssemuwemba, Apurva Mudliar and Peter Donelan

Women play a key role in fighting climate change

Women are 14 times more likely to die from a climate disaster than men. Despite being face-to-face with the problem, women are often not part of the solution.

March 25, 2021 - Max Mendez-Parra

How COVID-19 is accelerating the use of digital tech in agriculture in East Africa

Adoption of apps is facilitating farmers and businesses

March 10, 2020 - Aussama Bejraoui, Elisabeth Lambrecht, Frans Lammersen

Tools and finance to help transform least developed country economies

Transforming the economies of least developed countries (LDCs) requires a nationally supported vision on how to tackle the binding constraints to higher value-added production.

February 21, 2020 - Deanna Ramsay

Ambassador Morten Jespersen: Looking at aid funding, the private sector and country visions – where are LDCs now?

EIF’s Steering Committee Chair talks donor priorities, laying the groundwork for investment in LDCs and more

December 17, 2019 - Enhanced Integrated Framework (EIF)

Germany commits fresh funding to Enhanced Integrated Framework

On 17 December 2019, the Government of Germany announced an additional commitment of EUR 1.3 million to the Enhanced Integrated Framework (EIF).

August 15, 2019 - Violeta Gonzalez Behar, Fabrice Lehmann

5 ways to boost sustainable trade in the world’s poorest countries

Originally published by World Economic Forum Agenda on 4 July 2019

June 19, 2019 - Dan Ciuriak, Maria Ptashkina

A strategy to leverage the digital transformation for development

The digital transformation provides developing economies new opportunities to leapfrog industrial age infrastructure, to draw on the vast knowledge spillovers from the internet, to take advantage of new markets offered by digital platforms and to exploit production possibilities enabled by digital technologies.

June 17, 2019 - Luisa Bernal, Daria Shatskova

For trade development, shifting from fragility to resilience

The relative importance of trade and the degree of export concentration are higher than average in fragile least developed countries (LDCs).

June 13, 2019 - Aussama Bejraoui, Frans Lammersen, Justine Lan

Aid for trade, economic diversification and empowerment in the least developed countries

Economic diversification and empowerment are essential for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals; they also embody the rationale behind the Aid for Trade Initiative.

June 11, 2019 - David Luke, Heini Suominen

The African Continental Free Trade Area: Dawn of a new era

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) will transform the way Africa trades, with intra-African trade expected to increase by 15-25 per cent, and the boost to trade in industrial goods accelerating diversification of Africa’s economies.

June 06, 2019 - Cornelius Gregg, Bolormaa Tumurchudur Klok, Milagros Lazo Castro

In Malawi, bolstering youth and women’s employment through sectoral skills strategies

Skills strategies can provide a bridging mechanism to enable disadvantaged groups such as youth and women to gain from international trade.

June 04, 2019 - Pierre Sauvé, Ian Gillson, Pierre Sauvé

Economic diversification: Why trade matters

Economic diversification is a key element of development in which a country moves to a more diverse production structure, scaling-up resilience to external shocks and providing a path for equitable growth.

May 29, 2019 - Alice Tipping, Tristan Irschlinger

Fisheries subsidies negotiations: What is at stake for least developed countries?

Fisheries are a crucial source of animal protein, livelihoods and export earnings for many developing countries, including several least developed countries.