International records / OpenAlex research

EU Product Standards and Export Diversification in Nigeria and South Africa

The issue of export diversification has been receiving attention among scholars and policymakers. However, African countries face critical challenges in improving domestic capacity to meet production and quality standards required in the foreign markets.Premised on this, this study explores how standards affect agriculture and textile products exported to the EU market, by the two biggest economies in SSA between 1995 and 2004. Employing the Hirschman concentration index as a measure of diversification in the context of a modified poisson model of gravity trade theory, findings show that stand…