Light Manufacturing in Africa

Light Manufacturing in Africa PDF Author: Hinh T. Dinh
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 0821389610
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
This book examines how light manufacturing can offer a viable solution for Sub-Saharan Africa's need for structural transformation and productive job creation, given its potential competitiveness based on low wage costs and an abundance of natural resources that supply raw materials needed for industries. Based on five different analytical tools and data sources, the book examines in detail the binding constraints in each of the subsectors relevant for Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA): apparel, leather goods, metal products, agribusiness, and wood products. Ethiopia is used as an example, with Vietnam as a comparator and China as a benchmark, and with insights from Tanzania and Zambia used to draw out lessons more broadly for SSA. The book recommends a program of focused policies to exploit Africa's latent comparative advantage in a particular group of light manufacturing industries - especially leather goods, garments, and agricultural processing. These industries hold the prospect of initiating rapid, substantial, and potentially self-propelling waves of rising output, employment, productivity, and exports that can push countries like Ethiopia on a path of structural change of the sort recently achieved in both China and Vietnam. The timing for these initiatives is very appropriate as China's comparative advantage in these areas is diminishing due to steep cost increases associated with rising wages and non-wage labor costs, escalating land prices, and mounting regulatory costs. Five features of this book distinguish it from previous studies. First, the detailed work on light manufacturing at the subsector and product levels in five countries provide in-depth cost comparisons between Asia and Africa that can be used as a framework for future studies. Second, the book uses a wide array of quantitative and qualitative techniques to identify key constraints to enterprises and to evaluate firm performance differences across countries. Third, the findings that firm constraints vary by country, sector, and firm size led to a focused approach to identifying constraints and combining market-based measures and select government intervention to remove them. Fourth, the solution to light manufacturing problems cuts across many sectors: solving the manufacturing inputs problem requires solving specific issues in agriculture, education, and infrastructure. African countries cannot afford to wait until all the problems across sectors are resolved. Fifth, the book draws on experiences and solutions from other developing countries to inform its recommendations. This book will be very valuable to African policy makers, professional economists, and anyone interested in the economic development, industrialization, and structural transformation of developing countries.

Light Manufacturing in Africa

Light Manufacturing in Africa PDF Author: Hinh T. Dinh
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 0821389610
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 185

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book examines how light manufacturing can offer a viable solution for Sub-Saharan Africa's need for structural transformation and productive job creation, given its potential competitiveness based on low wage costs and an abundance of natural resources that supply raw materials needed for industries. Based on five different analytical tools and data sources, the book examines in detail the binding constraints in each of the subsectors relevant for Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA): apparel, leather goods, metal products, agribusiness, and wood products. Ethiopia is used as an example, with Vietnam as a comparator and China as a benchmark, and with insights from Tanzania and Zambia used to draw out lessons more broadly for SSA. The book recommends a program of focused policies to exploit Africa's latent comparative advantage in a particular group of light manufacturing industries - especially leather goods, garments, and agricultural processing. These industries hold the prospect of initiating rapid, substantial, and potentially self-propelling waves of rising output, employment, productivity, and exports that can push countries like Ethiopia on a path of structural change of the sort recently achieved in both China and Vietnam. The timing for these initiatives is very appropriate as China's comparative advantage in these areas is diminishing due to steep cost increases associated with rising wages and non-wage labor costs, escalating land prices, and mounting regulatory costs. Five features of this book distinguish it from previous studies. First, the detailed work on light manufacturing at the subsector and product levels in five countries provide in-depth cost comparisons between Asia and Africa that can be used as a framework for future studies. Second, the book uses a wide array of quantitative and qualitative techniques to identify key constraints to enterprises and to evaluate firm performance differences across countries. Third, the findings that firm constraints vary by country, sector, and firm size led to a focused approach to identifying constraints and combining market-based measures and select government intervention to remove them. Fourth, the solution to light manufacturing problems cuts across many sectors: solving the manufacturing inputs problem requires solving specific issues in agriculture, education, and infrastructure. African countries cannot afford to wait until all the problems across sectors are resolved. Fifth, the book draws on experiences and solutions from other developing countries to inform its recommendations. This book will be very valuable to African policy makers, professional economists, and anyone interested in the economic development, industrialization, and structural transformation of developing countries.

The Next Factory of the World

The Next Factory of the World PDF Author: Irene Yuan Sun
Publisher: Harvard Business Press
ISBN: 1633692825
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
A Best Business Book of 2017 -- The Financial Times China is now the biggest foreign player in Africa. It's Africa's largest trade partner, the largest infrastructure financier, and the fastest-growing source of foreign direct investment. Chinese entrepreneurs are flooding into the continent, investing in long-term assets such as factories and heavy equipment. Considering Africa's difficult history of colonialism, one might suspect that China's activity there is another instance of a foreign power exploiting resources. But as author Irene Yuan Sun vividly shows in this remarkable book, it is really a story about resilient Chinese entrepreneurs building in Africa what they so recently learned to build in China--a global manufacturing powerhouse. The fact that China sees Africa not for its poverty but for its potential wealth is a striking departure from the attitude of the West, particularly that of the United States. Despite fifty years of Western aid programs, Africa still has more people living in extreme poverty than any other region in the world. Those who are serious about raising living standards across the continent know that another strategy is needed. Chinese investment gives rise to a tantalizing possibility: that Africa can industrialize in the coming generation. With a manufacturing-led transformation, Africa would be following in the footsteps of the United States in the nineteenth century, Japan in the early twentieth, and the Asian Tigers in the late twentieth. Many may consider this an old-fashioned way to develop, but as Sun argues, it's the only one that's proven to raise living standards across entire societies in a lasting way. And with every new Chinese factory boss setting up machinery and hiring African workers--and managers--that possibility becomes more real for Africa. With fascinating and moving human stories along with incisive business and economic analysis, The Next Factory of the World will make you rethink both China's role in the world and Africa's future in the globalized economy.

Performance of Manufacturing Firms in Africa

Performance of Manufacturing Firms in Africa PDF Author: Hinh T. Dinh
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 0821396331
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
This book presents empirical analyses of manufacturing firm performance in Africa based on the World Bank Enterprise Survey and on a one-time quantitative survey conducted for the World Bank by the Center for the Study of African Economies of Oxford University.

Made in Africa

Made in Africa PDF Author: Carol Newman
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 0815728166
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
Why is there so little industry in Africa? Over the past forty years, industry has moved from the developed to the developing world, yet Africa’s share of global manufacturing has fallen from about 3 percent in 1970 to less than 2 percent in 2014. Industry is important to low-income countries. It is good for economic growth, job creation, and poverty reduction. Made in Africa: Learning to Compete in Industry outlines a new strategy to help African industry compete in global markets. This book draws on case studies and econometric and qualitative research from Africa and emerging Asia to understand what drives firm-level competitiveness in low-income countries. The results show that while traditional concerns such as infrastructure, skills, and the regulatory environment are important, they alone will not be sufficient for Africa to industrialize. The book also addresses how industrialization strategies will need to adapt to the region’s growing resource abundance.

Africa’s manufacturing puzzle: Evidence from Tanzanian and Ethiopian firms

Africa’s manufacturing puzzle: Evidence from Tanzanian and Ethiopian firms PDF Author: Diao, Xinshen
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 85

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Book Description
Recent growth accelerations in Africa are characterized by increasing productivity in agriculture, a declining share of the labor force employed in agriculture and declining productivity in modern sectors such as manufacturing. To shed light on this puzzle, we disaggregate firms in the manufacturing sector by size using two newly created panels of manufacturing firms, one for Tanzania covering 2008-2016 and one for Ethiopia covering 1996-2017. Our analysis reveals a dichotomy between larger firms that exhibit superior productivity performance but do not expand employment much, and small firms that absorb employment but do not experience any productivity growth. We suggest the poor employment performance of large firms is related to use of capital-intensive techniques associated with global trends in technology.

Manufacturing Transformation

Manufacturing Transformation PDF Author: Carol Newman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198776985
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
This book addresses three questions: Why is there so little industry in Africa? Does it matter? And, what can be done about it? It gives some of the results of a four year research programme by national and international researchers into what makes firms in low-income countries more competitive and what makes countries more attractive to competitive firms. The book fills an important gap in development economics and African studies. There is no other book on themarket devoted to such a comprehensive, comparative, cross-country analysis of Africa's industrialization experience. Both the policy conclusions drawn from the comparative analysis and the case studiesin their own right will be of substantial interest to readers. Policy makers in governments and international development agencies in particular will find the book useful and provocative. This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.

China-Africa and an Economic Transformation

China-Africa and an Economic Transformation PDF Author: Arkebe Oqubay
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198830505
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 363

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Book Description
This volume considers China-Africa relations in the context of a global division of labour and power, and through the history and experiences of both China and Africa. It examines the core ideas of structural transformation, productive investment and industrialization, international trade, infrastructure development, and financing.

Industrial Development in Africa

Industrial Development in Africa PDF Author: Berhanu Abegaz
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351671103
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
Industrial Development in Africa critically synthesizes and reframes the debates on African industrial development in a capability-opportunity framework. It recasts the challenge in a broader comparative context of successive waves of catchup industrialization experiences in the European periphery, Latin America, and East Asia. Berhanu Abegaz explores the case for resource-based and factor-based industrialization in North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa by drawing on insights from the history of industrialization, development economics, political economy, and institutional economics. Unpacking complex and diverse experiences, the chapters look at Africa at several levels: continent-wide, sub-regions on both sides of the Sahara, and present analytical case studies of 12 representative countries: Egypt, Tunisia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Mauritius, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, and Cote d’Ivoire. Industrial Development in Africa will be of interest to undergraduate and graduate students studying African development, African economics, and late-stage industrialization. The book will also be of interest to policymakers.

The Practice of Industrial Policy

The Practice of Industrial Policy PDF Author: John Page
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198796951
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
Examines how African policy makers might develop better coordination between the public and private sectors to identify the constraints to faster structural transformation, and to design, implement, and monitor policies to remove them.

Industrial Clusters and Micro and Small Enterprises in Africa

Industrial Clusters and Micro and Small Enterprises in Africa PDF Author: World Bank
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 082138628X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
The World Bank, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) Research Institute, and the Foundation for Advanced Studies on International Development (FASID), in collaboration with researchers affiliated with the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC), recently conducted a study on Africa s domestic enterprises to improve the understanding of the constraints micro and small enterprises in Africa face in improving productivity and expanding their markets. In Africa, there are stark performance gaps between domestically owned enterprises and foreign-owned enterprises in terms of sales performance, productivity, and ability to reach distant markets. Among others, size appears to be a dominant factor in explaining the gap. Against this background, the study analyzes how naturally formed industrial clusters concentrations of enterprises engaged in same or closely related industrial activities in specific locations could potentially mitigate constraints Africa s micro and small enterprises face and enhance their business performance. The study is one of the first comprehensive quantitative inquiries on industrial clusters in Africa. The analysis specifically focuses on the role of spontaneously grown clusters of light manufacturing industries based on a set of original case studies of industrial clusters conducted for this research project. One of the key findings from the case studies was that cluster-based micro and small enterprises are performing better than similar micro and small enterprises outside of the clusters in terms of sales performance and ability to reach distant markets. Market access is a leading reason for cluster-based enterprises to choose their current locations. However, cluster-based enterprises face another set of unique growth constraints. By the very nature of spontaneous agglomera tion, new enterprises continue to flow to the clusters seeking the profit opportunities and better access to markets at such locations. The result can be intense competition in addition to increased congestion. Space constraints often impede growth within clusters. The lack of alternative locations available for industrial activities in the same cities, generic infrastructure bottlenecks, and unclear zoning policies and their unpredictable changes limit firms location choices and constrain their mobility. While competition should improve efficiency, lack of capacity among those competing cluster-based enterprises to invest and innovate does not generate growth out of the competition. The vast majority of naturally formed clusters of light manufacturing industries in Africa are still at a survival level, where agglomeration externalities are only limited to expand quantity but not quality as we observe in more advanced innovation-oriented clusters in elsewhere in the world. Existing studies on such natural industrial clusters in Africa have found that the lack of managerial skills among entrepreneurs running micro and small enterprises is a major constraint for innovation and growth in the clusters. As a part of this study, pilot managerial skills training programs were conducted in two industrial clusters on an experimental basis, where a group of randomly selected entrepreneurs within the clusters were given three-week long crush course of based management such as bookkeeping, marketing, business planning, and production management. The impact evaluation of the experiments showed significant positive impacts of the training programs on value added and gross profits of enterprises. Raising the current survival-type industrial clusters, which have been formed as a coping mechanism to weak investment climate, into more dynamic innovating clusters will be an important avenue for fostering growth of micro and small enterprises in Africa. While national efforts to improve investment climate and investments in human capital are undoubtedly important, there could be more targeted policies to be formulated, in complementing general policies, to support growth of micro and small domestic enterprises using existing industrial clusters as a natural springboard for their growth. In that context, the study discusses the merit of cluster-based managerial human capital development to build steps toward more innovation-oriented clusters, the importance of sound spatial planning policy, particularly at the local level in the context of urban planning, the need to expand market access and economic linkages for industrial clusters including regional integration and linkages with large enterprises.