International Trade Forum - Volume 2017, Issue 3, 2017

Recent years have seen trade facing headwinds. Scratch beneath the surface of many of the recent headlines and political debates, and you will find trade being blamed for a number of challenges facing countries across the world.

Can fashion help change people’s lives? At the International Trade Centre (ITC), we think so. Since it was launched in 2009, the ITC Ethical Fashion Initiative (EFI) has provided opportunities for artisans across the developing world, including Ghana, Haiti and Kenya, connecting them to some of the world’s leading fashion houses.

Chile, Costa Rica and Mexico were Latin America’s big winners in the 2017 edition of the Global Innovation Index (GII), which ranks the world’s economies on their innovative capabilities (innovation inputs) and measurable results (innovation outputs).

The intersection between trade and labour is a topic that has attracted much attention over the past 12 months. From Brexit to the presidential election in the United States, politicians have sought to exploit the notion that trade – and in particular trade liberalization – produces negative effects on labour standards and conditions.

The case for trade as an enabler of growth, job creation and poverty reduction is well documented. Between 2000 and 2015 trade played a significant role in helping the world halve the number of people living in extreme poverty as set out in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – the successors to the MDGs – recognize the role of trade as a component in achieving the ambitious, new target of eliminating extreme poverty by 2030.

During recent times our world has faced significant economic challenges and security risks. When Hungary introduced bold economic policy reforms a few years ago it was subjected to strong criticism from domestic political opposition and various international institutions, as well as from public figures and representatives of foreign governments. The objective of these policy reforms was to make the Hungarian economy resistant to future crises.

The European Union (EU) is at the vanguard of marrying the values of sustainable development with the economic engine of trade. Through the incorporation of comprehensive commitments on environmental and labour provisions in all its bilateral trade agreements the EU aims to build free and fair trading relationships. This is a reflection of EU determination to strengthen and uphold the international community’s journey that began with the Millennium Development Goals and the 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio +20) and has culminated with the United Nations 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development, including the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Digital disruption is one of the hottest topics in the business community at the moment. From the boardrooms of the world’s largest companies to small co-working hubs filled with small businesses and startups, there’s a growing sense that the internet is changing the world so quickly they must quickly understand how they can take advantage or risk losing their business.

There is a saying in Ghana that ‘Ghana is cocoa, and cocoa is Ghana’. Not only is Ghana the second-largest producer of cocoa in the world, but cocoa is an integral part of the nation’s fabric. It is the country’s most important export, accounting for 8% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP)_and 30% of export earnings. It also provides employment for approximately 4 million cocoa-farming households, most of which are family-run on plots of less than 1.2 acres and suffer from food and income insecurity.

Paul Hawken, an American environmentalist, entrepreneur, author and activist who has dedicated his life to environmental sustainability and changing the relationship between business and the environment, has estimated that nearly 99% of the goods we buy will become waste after six months of use.

Sona Jobarteh is traditional and modern, local and global, music-minded and business-minded. Above all, she is Gambian.

The internet and e-commerce provide new opportunities for firms of all sizes, located anywhere, to prosper from trade. Likewise, improved access to information represents a rising tide that can lift all boats. The fragmented nature of the current information system for trade is an unintended design flaw that can be addressed through standards, different mediums for policy delivery and the use of appropriate internet-enabled technologies. Improving access to information through trade digitization will enable better global market outcomes, particularly for small firms.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Afghanistan that want to become a part of the global trade market are faced with a myriad of problems that render this objective very difficult, if not impossible, in many cases.

Some 80,000 farmers in Ethiopia depend on ginger cultivation. A 2011 outbreak of bacterial wilt, a plant disease, reduced ginger yields nearly to zero, putting their livelihoods at grave risk.