For African economies, international and regional trade is a key component of any growth, poverty reduction, or food security agenda. Trade negotiations with third parties, such as the Economic Partnership Agreements with the European Union, or internally among African countries, such as the Common External Tariffs in West or East Africa, remain hot topics. Therefore, it is critical that stakeholders in Africa have a pool of local experts to provide relevant information that can shed light on the complex issues linked to trade policies. AGRODEP partners, namely the World Trade Organization (WTO) and its Institute of Training and Technical Cooperation and IFPRI, in collaboration with the Centre for Research on Economic Analyses and Policies (CERAPE) and Centre de Recherche et d'Étude en Sciences Sociales et Humaines (CRESSH), organized a national training workshop on: "Agriculture and Trade Policy in Republic of Congo." The workshop took place from April 10-13, 2012. The objective of this workshop was to train Congolese researchers on multilateral trade issues related to agriculture, as well as to put the regional dynamics in Central Africa in a larger framework.
The national workshop was held under the supervision of Mustapha Sadni Jallab, Advisor of the Institute for Training and Technical Cooperation of WTO in Geneva, and was opened by Dr Jean-Christophe Boungou Bazika, Executive Director of CERAPE. Dr. Josephine Nsika delivered the welcome address on behalf of CRESSH, the host institution. Faustin Luanga, Expert of WTO, gave a speech outlining the objectives and interest of the national workshop. Also present were directors of research centers of the Ministry of Scientific Research, researchers, and journalists from national television and radio outlets.
The workshop program involved a series of presentations made by experts from the WTO (Mustapha Sadni Jallab and Faustin Luanga), IFPRI (David Laborde), CERAPE, and CRESSH (Bigala Jacques and JC Boungou Bazika). These presentations focused on the WTO missions, theories of international trade, agricultural agreements, multilateral trade and regional integration, agriculture and international trade of Congo, the computable general equilibrium model, and the TASTE simulation software, as well as other topics.
About 20 researchers attended the workshop. At the last session, Congolese researchers presented several research projects, gathering the comments made by experts from WTO and IFPRI to improve their research proposals. The themes of the projects involved the Congolese economy and computable general equilibrium model, regional integration in Central Africa, international trade in agricultural products, the WTO's role in the CEMAC countries, and other topics.
The national workshop was the first event carried out by WTO, AGRODEP, and other national institutions in the country. The participants expressed their wish that further workshops will be organized in the future on a regular basis in Brazzaville.