This paper argues that official development assistance (foreign aid) is partly responsible for the lack of structural change in Africa. Africa's development partners have devoted too few resources and too little attention to two critical constraints to private investment, infrastructure and...

A sustainable pathway for Africa in the twenty-first century is laid out in the setting of the development of innovation capabilities and the capture of latecomer advantages. Africa has missed out on these possibilities in the twentieth century while seeing the East Asian countries advance....

This paper argues that new technologies - for communication, such as mobile phones and the internet, but also for manufacturing, agriculture, energy, and transport - have the potential to bridge many of the productivity gaps between sub-Saharan Africa and more advanced developing and developed...

This paper analyses policy options to promote local content in Uganda as it transitions into an oil-producing country. It contends that productive linkages between oil and gas exporters and domestic suppliers in a range of "connected" goods and services sectors can be a source of broad-based...

The paper evaluates strategies for developing successful special economic zones and transnational zones for Southern African countries to spur growth and employment. Most special economic zones implemented in Southern Africa have largely failed to bring adequate growth and employment due to...

Tanzania ranks among the leading stars of the 'African growth miracle', but a sector that has been largely absent from the Tanzania success story is industry. Although growth of manufacturing has outpaced economic growth over the past decade, relative to international norms and its ambitious...

We examine the extent to which two of Africa's leading gold mining economies, Ghana and Tanzania, have adopted transformative local procurement policies to enhance backward linkages from the minerals sector. We assess the impact that evolving legislation in the gold industry has had on...

Recent developments in policy initiatives as well as some current practical events have combined to put the spotlight on the issue of industrial embeddedness in sub-Saharan Africa. Though extant research documents, some stylized facts, as determinants of its manifestations of their relevance to...

Africa should industrialize. Without structural change it cannot sustain recent growth. Economies with more diverse and sophisticated industrial sectors tend to grow faster. But since 1980 Africa has deindustrialized. The paper shows that between 1975 and 2005 the size, diversity and...

In the past, research on changes in relative importance among broad three sectors - ;agriculture, industry, and service - showed general patterns of a country's structural transformation along with economic development. However, there has been devoid of empirical studies investigating in the...