Stronger regional integration has been apolicy priority in Africa for several decades. Countries inAfrica have committed to a process of deeper integration,but have made little progress in implementing commitmentsand removing barriers. This report looks at the monitoringof regional integration in Africa and argues that moreeffective monitoring processes for existing integrationarrangements can help to raise the profile of the prevailingimplementation deficits and provide policy makers and civilsociety with the necessary information to push forcorrective action. Currently, most integration monitoringsystems are scorecard-based compliance assessments. Toobtain information on the impact of integration policies onordinary traders, indicators of trade transaction costs arerequired. These can be indirect measures of trade volumechanges or price differences, or direct estimates of thevarious trade cost components. The overall aim of thisreport is to explore indicators that capture the impact ofregional policy reforms on trade transaction costs forordinary traders, with a focus on indicators that can belinked to the implementation of specific policy measures.The report is organized as follows: section one givesintroduction. Section two briefly discusses integrationmonitoring systems and related indicators in general.Section three presents an overview of regional tradeindicators that are currently used by policy makers inSub-Saharan Africa. Section four discusses the three maintypes of indicators, compliance with integrationcommitments, outcomes indirectly and at an aggregate level,and capturing specific trade cost components either directlyor indirectly. Section five focuses on generating newindicators from new types of data sources; and section sixdiscusses the way forward.
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