Conference Proceeding No. 01 of 2000 on Report of the Proceedings of the AERC-KIPPRA World Trade Organization (WTO) Workshop

Abstract

The Uruguay Round of the multilateral trade negotiations led to the establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1994, with the mandate of fostering progressive liberalization of world trade in goods and services. The WTO presents substantial opportunity for developing countries like Kenya to expand their exportation of goods and services. However, these opportunities have hardly been realized; in fact. it appears that developing countries have so far been adversely affected by the advent of the WTO. Questions now abound with respect to this outcome. Overall indications are that developing countries have perfonned poorly because of their relatively weak negotiation position as well as skills. For instance, it is widely known that the African voice has been rather silent during these negotiations. As negotiations on Agriculture and Services are currently going on, there are frantic efforts to make the African voice more audible through capacity building, cooperation among similar-minded countries, and through other efforts. It was against this background that the AERC-KIPPRA workshop was organized...