Formal trade or Cross-border trade (CBT) is the formal exchange of goods or services between two countries. It is also known as international trade. Our work is to distill the most relevant lessons about formal trade and its significant economic gains. Emerging countries can learn from each other the various approaches that have successfully been implemented towards promoting the cross border trade formalization.

Informal trade is commonly observed in sub-Saharan Africa. It entails all the cross-border trade operations conducted in person or in groups without any kind of formal procedure. Informally traded products or services are not necessarily prohibited but they typically do not meet structured process requirements like regulation standards, company certification or operating licenses

Trade corridors are networks of supply chain and transportation structures and facilities organized nationally or regionally to promote movement of trade and freights between economic hubs (e.g. in hinterlands) and foreign trade access points (e.g. seaports). Trade corridors sometimes have several interconnected infrastructure, like highways, railways and ports, and it could connect several cities or nations. Corridors could be developed to connect production hubs, large supply and demand regions and value-added products producers. Trade corridors are sometimes any of a bundle of various measures when introduced, namely infrastructural capacity building, visa and transportation treaties, and standardization. Also attention is paid to the social needs, such as housing .Example of trade corridors in West Africa are the Dakar (Senegal) – Lagos (Nigeria) African Multimodal Transport Corridor (Transport Course) and Lagos-Mombasa Trans-African Corridor.

The Global Value Chain (GVC) identifies the individuals and processes involved in the development and procurement, delivery and post-sales operations of a commodity in cases where operations need to be organized across regions and countries. Wide range of functions (design, manufacturing, marketing, distribution and end-consumer service, etc.) are spread throughout international facilities between various companies and staff to deliver a commodity from inception to its end-use and onward.