Africa's industrial performance has been poor and its ability to industrialize successfully is under increasing question. This paper argues that industrialization remains vital to African development. It describes the current global industrial setting and analyses the recent performance of African manufacturing relative to that of other developing regions. It finds that Africa is becoming increasingly marginal to the technological dynamics of global economy. It shows few signs of a responding to the competitive stimulus of liberalization or of attracting more mobile foreign productive factors. It analyses the reasons for this performance and argues that the basic problem of African industry lies not in the investment climate (which can certainly be improved) or in gaining market access to rich countries (which is already very good for manufactures, and has improved with initiatives like AGOA) but in the low level of its industrial capabilities. The paper concludes with the need to reconsider current African industrial strategy and to evolve a new strategy focused on building capabilities.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
file. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford in its series QEH Working Papers with number
qehwps122.
Length: Date of creation: Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:qeh:qehwps:qehwps122
Contact details of provider: Postal: Queen Elizabeth House 3 Mansfield Road, Oxford, OX1 3TB United Kingdom Phone: +44 (1865) 281800 Fax: +44 (1865) 281801 Email: Web page: http://www.qeh.ox.ac.uk/ More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Rachel Crawford).
Related research
Keywords:
Other versions of this item:
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: