Industrialisation and Economic Transformation in Africa: Introduction and Overview

The essays in this volume document in various ways the limited extent of structural change in Africa over the past 40 years. They also document and analyse the failure of Africa to industrialise while addressing the question of how policies might be reshaped to boost industrial development and accelerate structural transformation in Africa. Each of the papers explores one or more of the channels by which industrial development drives structural change. They pointed out that the idea that Africa should industrialise is not new as the continent's post-independence leaders – like those in many developing countries in the 1960s and 1970s – looked to state-led, import substituting industrialisation as the key to rapid economic growth. However, the industries they created were frequently uncompetitive and unsustainable, and efforts to spur industrial development in Africa largely vanished with the economic collapses and adjustment programs of the 1980s and 1990s. In contrast to the region's earlier efforts at industrial policy, it was argued that states must work with the market as public action moves beyond the regulatory reform agenda to addressing the physical, institutional and knowledge constraints limiting Africa's industrial development. Copyright 2012 , Oxford University Press.