Economic reform and export-oriented industrialization : an applicable model for LDCs?

This article examines the domestic and external factors that facilitated the implementation of economic reforms and export-oriented industrialization (EOI) in Vietnam, and seeks to investigate why the comparable policies of nine selected African countries (Angola, Benin, Congo-Brazzaville, Ethiopia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Zambia) proved relatively less successful. It raises the question of whether the latter countries could have achieved better results in the field of export performance and export diversification by following the example of Vietnam, but it does not intend to present the Vietnamese case in an excessively normative way. Instead of summarily juxtaposing the positive aspects of Vietnam's economic development to the negative aspects of African economic policies, it seeks to draw a more nuanced picture in which the deficiencies of the Vietnamese model and the achievements of the African counties are also duly acknowledged. Similarly, the article devotes equal attention to structural and policy factors. It argues that the post-1986 policies of the Vietnamese authorities did make a major contribution to the country's impressive economic performance, but it also emphasizes the role of such structural factors as a country's external economic environment and the historical and social background of local entrepreneurship