Impact of breakdowns in peace and security as well as the fragility of the States of theDakar-Djibouti cross-border corridors; Dakar Lagos on the distribution of Senegal's bilateral trade in the ECOWAS region
Baye Alioune
Abstract
This article aims to determine the impact of disruptions in peace and security as well as the fragility of the States of the Dakar-Djibouti axes; Dakar Lagos on the distribution of Senegal's bilateral trade in the ECOWAS region.
It attempts to provide an answer to the following main question: What is the impact of the degree of fragility of the states located on the Dakar Djibouti and Dakar-Lagos corridors on the distribution of Senegal's bilateral trade in the ECOWAS area.
We tested the following two research hypotheses:
- The Dakar-Djibouti Trans-African road axes; Dakar Lagos have a significant impact on the distribution of Senegal's bilateral trade in the ECOWAS area.
- The fragilities of States and the ruptures of peace and security on the Dakar-Djibouti axes; Dakar Lagos has a significant impact on the distribution of Senegal's bilateral trade in the ECOWAS area.
To test this hypothesis, we carried out a review of the theoretical literature on peace and security, the fragility of States and the analysis of stylized facts on the research problem. The review of the theoretical literature shows that the threat to peace and international security is linked to the failure of the state explained by the country's fragile economy; which in turn affects the development of trade and economic growth.
In this regard, the treatment of the research issue through the analysis of stylized facts on trade between Senegal and other ECOWAS countries shows that:
- The existence of trans-African road corridors (Dakar-Djibouti; Dakar Lagos) has no significant positive effect on the export of Senegalese products to the level of the ECOWAS region because Senegal exchanges more with West African countries with which they also share common borders.
- The breakdowns in peace and security, the economic fragility and social instability of ECOWAS countries have a significant impact on Senegal's exports at the Zone level.
We thus note that two catalyst factors of international trade, notably geographic connectivity and international peace and security, do not yet seem to benefit the development of Senegal's foreign trade in the ECOWAS region. In other words, the promotion of the development of trans African transport infrastructure and the improvement of the architecture of peace and international security must be accentuated for the development of Intrazone trade and the increase of private investment (domestic and abroad in the ECOWAS region.
Introduction
Connectivity is a determinant of the development of trade. There are two trans- African corridors which connect Senegal with the other ECOWAS countries, in particular the Dakar-Ndjamena corridors; Dakar Lagos. In addition to the existence of an economic community of West African states, the said corridors are expected to have a significant impact on Senegal's foreign trade compared to other ECOWAS countries.
Figure 1: Main trans-African road axes
With 8,715 km of length, Trans-African Highway linking Dakar (Senegal) to Djibouti (Djibouti) will cross 10 countries in West, Central and East Africa. The countries of the Dakar-Lagos trans-African corridor cross Senegal, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria.
Peace is also essential for the development of trade and economic growth. On the other hand, war weakens institutions, increases poverty, reduces growth potential by destroying infrastructure, as well as financial and human capital. It diverts resources towards violence, rent seeking and corruption.
An economically weak country is more exposed to war. Poverty and economic stagnation lead to marginalization, the victims of which no longer have a place in the productive economy. With little hope of finding a job or ensuring a reasonable standard of living, these marginalized people risk turning to violence. Competition for control over these natural resources can cause conflict and income from natural resources can finance wars ”. It is also noted that the loss of natural resources, climate change, desertification, natural disasters as well as forced migration threatens international peace and security.
According to (Koulibaly, 2009) “the science of economics, bases peace on three fundamental pillars: property, freedom and exchange. In human relations, sustainability is based on peace and justice in the amicable settlement of conflicts. In the event of violent conflicts, collaboration ceases, free exchange and social ties too. The war economy then took over with its smugglers and traffickers of all kinds. Individual rights and freedoms are then systematically violated. If the State appropriates the patrimony of the populations, there is the spoliation of property and the temptation then becomes great for all organized gangs, armed or not, to lay hands on this patrimony and benefit from the income that it will generate. Annuities stoke greed and, in the absence of free trade, they lead to armed conflict and compromise peace. Any expropriation of populations leads to civil war against a background of ethnicism and tribalism. The rule of law is the contractual order of society which enshrines the rule of law and stabilizes peace. This rule of law defines the framework within which individuals are free to act. The State then intervenes only by subsidiarity beyond the limits of inter-individual contracts”. Growing prosperity widely shared economic stability both nationally and internationally, can foster peace. The Universal Encyclopedia Larousse 2009 defines peace as: "State of concord, of agreement between citizens, social groups, absence of social struggles or social unrest" which make a society capable of emerging from a state of war and of quarrels. Peace is the result of exchanges between free people. "To make peace, as Aristide Briand says, you need two people: yourself and the neighbor opposite".
According to the Fund for Peace, (2009) “since the 1970s most wars have been national”. The US agency National Security Strategy estimated in 2002 that fragile states pose a greater risk to international security than states with imperialist ambitions (Foreign Policy, 2005). Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan argued in 2005 that ignoring fragile states was a long-term threat to international stability (Foreign Policy, 2005). The Fund for Peace, in 2009, about one in five inhabitants would live in a so-called failed state.
The scientific community and the political community are struggling to find a consensus on precise definitions: fragile, failed, destabilized, collapsed states, etc. Then, the definition of the concept comes up against theories, the actors and their analyzes. Some define fragile states as opposed to so-called “stable” states or states that would represent a kind of norm at the international level (Brooks, 2005). "A fragile state would be a state that fails or experiences difficulties in ensuring political stability, economic security and social cohesion on its territory."
The end of the Cold War marks the emergence of the concept of the "fragile" or "failed state and the beginning of a new era in international relations" (Brooks, 2005). Indeed during this period some states collapsed and others imploded. Thus, following the observation of these phenomena, authors have built a whole field of study around this concept of "fragile state" or "failed state". In other words, it illustrates, in a way, the resurgence of the notion of the state in scientific studies of international relations. According to Rotberg, (2002) “it is estimated that more than eight (08) million dead and more than four (04) million displaced throughout the world, the victims of conflicts within these fragile states.
“When the Founding Fathers gathered in Bretton Woods in 1944, peace was high on their agenda. At the end of the conference, Keynes said that as we all work together, "this nightmare, in which most of us have spent too much of our lives, will come to an end." Henry Morgenthau, Secretary of the US Treasury, concurred, linking peace to shared prosperity and denouncing the economic policies of the interwar period. According to him, “economic aggression can only lead to war”.
The concept of "fragile state" entered the vocabulary of development aid in the early 1990s during the time of the crisis in Somalia. However, donor countries channeled most of their aid to a few countries, in particular that practiced good governance rather than fragile states. According to (Rice and Patrick, 2008) “in its 2008 Index of state weakness in the developing world report, the Brookings Institution proposed six policy recommendations to the United States and the international community based on its analyzes and of its indexing of fragile states. These advocated, among other things, the increase in efforts to fight poverty and the improvement of the internal and external security of States, to pay attention to the management and preservation of resources, to favor cooperation with international organizations and countries concerned.
a- Research questions
What is the impact of the fragility of the states located on the Dakar Ndjamena and Dakar- Lagos corridors on the distribution of Senegal's bilateral trade in the ECOWAS area.
b- Research objectives
- Determine the impact of the trans African Dakar-Djibouti road axes; Dakar Lagos on the distribution of Senegal's bilateral trade in the ECOWAS region
- Determine the impact of the fragility of the states located on the Dakar Ndjamena and Dakar-Lagos corridors on the distribution of Senegal's bilateral trade in the ECOWAS area.
- Propose strategic axes of promotion of Senegal's foreign trade at the level of ECOWAS countries on the Dakar Djibouti and Dakar-Lagos axis.
1: Literature review
Three main economic analyzes of conflicts can be distinguished:
- the so-called utilitarian one, which reasons in terms of the economic rationality of representative agents;
- that which is situated in the paradigm of political economy;
- and one that treats war as a systemic risk.
One can assume that conflicts result from economic rationality on the part of representative agents in a weak institutional context. On this subject, some research suggests questioning the theory of general equilibrium and the theory of contracts to formalize the behavior of belligerents and governments. In his article, “A General Equilibrium Model of Insurrections., H. L. Grossman, studies how a government chooses its military spending to optimally reduce the likelihood of being toppled. Governments and rebels each have their function of utility, costs of intervention, probabilities of success.
Some works propose the introduction of information asymmetries, questions of adverse selection and credibility and consider several equilibria such as the optimal Pareto solution, or cooperation; the uncooperative Cournot-Nash solution; or the balance with leader of Stackelberg. Azam, Berthelemy, Calipel produced a model where he assumes that opposition activity is an increasing function of government predatory and repressive activities, and a decreasing function of redistributive activities. The econometric test covering the period 1975-1980 and takes military spending relative to GDP (Gross Domestic Product) as an indicator of repression, and health and education spending as indicators of redistribution. In a probit model, socio-political unrest takes on a value of 1 if there are strikes, demonstrations, riots, attacks, coups d'état. The regression showed that Military spending has the expected positive sign; spending on health and education shows the expected negative sign. In contrast, the secondary school enrollment rate has a positive sign. Therefore, peace appears if we reduce predation by improving the redistribution and the credibility of the state's redistributive processes, by establishing quotas of officials, checks and balances and by increasing the role of civil society; government information on the actions of excluded groups is improved.
There are several definitions of fragile states, but all of them highlight the link between state fragility and insufficient capacity. Most definitions share the idea that fragile states have governments unable to provide basic security to their citizens, provide basic services and economic opportunities, and have sufficient legitimacy to maintain trust of their citizens. According to Foreign Policy & Fund for Peace “a failed state is a state that has a weak and ineffective government that has lost control over its territory. The State Failure Index can be a tool for world leaders and policy makers to identify areas of turmoil that could have implications for world stability and whose stabilization requires the mobilization of resources and time considered naturally beneficial.
The French Development Agency (AFD), like the World Bank (WB), incorporates the concept of fragile state in their plans. For these financial institutions, the fragility of a state is analyzed in terms of the fragility of economic and environmental development. Having "capabilities" means having the skills, resources, relationships and conditions necessary to act effectively to achieve certain goals. “Sustainable capacities” involve endogenous processes that exist in a country regardless of what donors do. Capacity can be addressed at several levels: individuals, organizations and institutions. Institutions are about the rules, guidelines, laws, customs and practices that govern the functioning of societies. Some donors refer to this level as the "enabling environment".
Researchers have developed analytical tools specific to the concept of fragile state. Among them, there is a decisive tool which is based on both a qualitative approach and a quantitative methodology. This procedure is that of indexing States according to their degree of fragility. The actors involved in indexing are diverse, some creating the tool and others using it. These are non-governmental organizations, States, intergovernmental organizations, the scientific community and the private sector. The indexes are as numerous as the actors. According to (Rice and Patrick, 2008). "The main creators of the Fragile States Indexes are the Fund for Peace, the Commission on Weak States and US National Security, the Central Intelligence Agency's Directorate of Intelligence, the United Kingdom's Department for International Development, the US Agency for International Development and the World Bank's Fragile and Conflict-Affected Countries Group ».
The same goes for methodologies which process a considerable volume of statistical data in order to develop a plethora of indices. These make it possible to develop categorical classifications and can be ordered into different main groups. The economy, the social, the political and the security illustrate the fields synthesizing the major part of the indicators used for the development of the indices to measure the fragility or the stability of States. The challenges of the production and use of this process essentially revolve around the desire of the various actors to perpetuate or increase international stability through the observation, analysis and forecasting of international relations.
However, indexation remains only the practical expression of the theory of fragile states and, therefore, its development and use vary according to the nature and objectives of the actors referring to it. The World Bank is participating in its own way in the indexing of States by developing its own measurement instrument, in particular LICUS, or Low Income Countries Under Stress, which identifies some twenty countries with low incomes and under extreme stress. Following on from a 2002 report, this index was a response to the challenges faced by the World Bank and other donors in their support to politically and institutionally weak nations (Lavoix, 2007).
The failure index of states, over the past ten years, has been calculated from 12 social, political, economic, security and military indicators. With these indicators, each country receives a score ranging from 0 for stable and peaceful states, up to 10 for unstable and failing states. The index is obtained by adding together the different scores. It allows countries to be ranked on a scale from 0 to 120.
- Stable countries enjoying a situation of lasting peace have an index of less than 29.9.
- Countries between 30 and 59.9 enjoy moderate stability and peace. They have a situation called under control.
- Countries in a worrying situation and subject to warning have indices between 60 and 89.9.
- Finally, countries on alert have an index between 90 and 120. The state is practically non-existent there.
Although the classical authors tend to demonstrate that the development of exchanges between nations is beneficial for all participating countries, the fact remains that exchanges may not be profitable for all in the same way and that they also result in a certain number of negative effects in the short or medium term (the abandonment of certain productions increases unemployment). Some authors have therefore developed theses aimed at justifying the implementation of protectionist measures in order to temporarily limit international trade.
“Wall Street Journal” and the “Heritage Foundation” publish the indices of economic freedom every year. This index uses ten indicators that measure the freedom of trade, the situation of property rights as well as those of corruption, freedom to hire and fire. The size of the State, monetary and financial facilities, tax incentives and investment opportunities are also taken into account.
The index calculated on these variables makes it possible to classify the economies from the most free (the first) to the most repressed (179th).
Scores vary from 0 to 100 according to the following categories of countries:
- (0 - 49.9) economy is suppressed.
- (50 - 59.9) economy is not free.
- (60 - 69.9) economy is moderately free.
- (70 - 79.9) economy is rather free.
- (100) Economic freedoms are respected
2: Analysis of stylized facts on the impact of state fragility on the development of international trade on the Dakar-Djibouti axes; Dakar Lagos
With regard to the indexes of economic freedoms, failure of states proposed by the Fund and Peace, Heritage Foundation, the ECOWAS partner countries of Senegal located on the Dakar Djamena and Dakar Lagos axes, namely Guinea, Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger with economic freedom index scores between (50- 59.9) are classified in the category of "economies that are not free"
Table 1: Index of failure and economic freedoms of States located on the Dakar Djamena and Dakar Lagos axes
Axe |
Fragile state Index de 2020 (rank/ 178 countries) |
Economic freedom index |
Dakar Lagos |
|
|
1-Guinee |
15 eme |
56,5 |
2-Gambie |
51 eme |
56 ,3 |
3-Guinee Bissau |
23 eme |
53,3 |
4-Sierra Léone |
42 eme |
48 |
5-liberia |
31 eme |
49 |
Dakar Djaména |
|
|
7-Mali |
16 eme |
55,9 |
9-Burkina faso |
37 eme |
56,7 |
9-Niger |
19 eme |
54,7 |
Source: compiled by author using Fund and Peace 2020 data and (http://www.heritage.org/index)
A positive correlation appears to be established between economic freedom and peace and security. Through Figure 2, we note that most African countries characterized by little freedom have experienced persistent and security breakdowns.
Figure 2: Descriptive analysis of the correlation between Conflicts and economic freedom
Source: By the Africa Center for Strategic Studies September 27, 2016
Figure 4: Illustration of the main conflict zones in Africa
Source : http://www.izf.net/content/carte-risque-investissement-afrique
Senegal displays international competitiveness at the level of eleven (11) ECOWAS countries namely Mali, Guinea, Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Burkina Faso, Benin, Sierra Leone, Niger, Liberia, Cape Verde, Ivory Coast.
Among the nine (11) countries:
- six (06) countries are on the Dakar-Lagos road axis namely Guinea, Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Benin
-
- four (04) belong to the Dakar –Ndjamena road axis. These are Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, the Ivory Coast.
However, the ECOWAS countries on the Dakar –Ndjamena and Dakar Lagos highways respectively support 75% and 24% of Senegal's exports to the West African economic community. In addition, we note that in 2019, the countries that imported the most products from Senegal in the ECOWAS region are most often those with which they share common borders. These are Mali, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, and The Gambia. In addition, we note that Senegal's exports to Mali represent 61% of Senegal's exports within the ECOWAS region.
The existence of trans-African road corridors does not seem to benefit significantly the export of Senegalese products to the level of the ECOWAS region. Several factors can explain this situation including the state of trans-African roads, security, police and customs harassment.
Table 2: Senegal's net exports at the level of ECOWAS countries (2019)
|
|
exportations (US dollars thousand) |
Trade Balance (US dollars thousand) |
1 |
Mali |
959 120 |
955 922 |
2 |
Guinee |
134 478 |
132 655 |
3 |
Gambie |
77 492 |
74 435 |
4 |
Guinee Bissau |
65 473 |
65 456 |
