The EUs share of trade with ACP countries accounts for a small part of its foreign trade. Moreover, this share has declined in recent years, despite decades of tariff preferences in favour of ACP countries under the Cotonou agreement. For most ACP countries and for virtually all African ACP countries the EU is the main trading partner.

Moreover, ACP exports remain concentrated in a few primary products, which are mainly commodities. Alongside the multilateral liberalisation process, many ACP countries are pursuing comprehensive regional integration processes. However, intra-regional trade is still fairly low in many regions.

A thematic global evaluation of the European Commissions (EC) support to Trade-Related Assistance in Third Countries was finalized in 2013. The main objectives of the evaluation were to provide an overall independent assessment of the ECs past and current support to Trade-Related Assistance in Third Countries and to identify key lessons in order to improve the ECs current and future strategies and programmes.

Nathan partnered with Transtec to conduct the evaluation of three EU ACP Trade Programmes simultaneously, so as to draw overarching conclusions on good practices and lessons learned, and recommendations regarding previous and recent strategies and programming architectures on how ongoing and future EU funded trade assistance should be designed to be most effective, efficient, relevant and sustainable, with special attention to milestones and complementarity.