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Publications (35)
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The construction sector plays a critical role in delivering quality infrastructure, which in turn influences the use of natural resource revenues towards achieving structural change and industrial development. We use industrial organization and political economy lenses to describe and understand the...
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– Reflections on investment surges and new gas
This paper is a sequel to an earlier paper that looked in broad terms at many of the issues that Mozambique faces today in managing its new extractive resources. The paper first describes the investment surge that has already been prompted by new gas discoveries in Mozambique. It then summarizes...
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– Local content in Zambia—a faltering experience?
This paper traces the role of local content in Zambia’s mining sector in supporting industrialization and economic diversification. It assesses productive linkages and manufacturing competitiveness during import-substitution industrialization and post-1991 liberalization and privatization, and the...
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– An overview
The construction sector value added in Mozambique grew at an average annual rate of 12.8 per cent in 1993–2015. Investment in the basic infrastructure of health, education, and housing improved families’ and communities’ living conditions. Investment in roads, communications, and office facilities...
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Oil resources are neither a curse nor a blessing. The sound management of these resources can make them beneficial or otherwise. In order to translate Ghana’s oil resources into inclusive development amid high expectations, several laws and regulations have been passed and new institutions created...
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– Diversification in Africa’s resource-rich economies
The exploitation of natural resources is a huge opportunity, but one that carries considerable risks. Relative prices in resource-exporting economies tend to push them towards economic structures dominated by the resource sector. This paper explores ways to achieve diversification in a resource-rich...
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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 countries...
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– A progress report
This paper reviews integration among the eight African Regional Economic Communities by comparing their characteristics and progress with three other South–South Regional Integration Arrangements. Three conclusions emerge: (i) slow progress towards meeting overly ambitious objectives; (ii) small...
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– The case of the mobile money transfer industry
The mobile money transfer industry has been the most successful information and communications technology-enabled service in Kenya, having recorded an exponential growth relative to its neighbours within the East Africa region. This could be attributed to Kenya’s status as a leading commercial and...
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– From devastation to services-first transformation
Since civil war and genocide left the country in ruins, Rwanda has undergone a remarkable transformation. Growth rates since 1995 have averaged 8 per cent annually, poverty rates have fallen, maternal and child health have improved, and infrastructure and public institutions have been rebuilt. This...
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– A portrait of capacity and competition in various market segments
Sub-Saharan Africa’s air transport, though low in overall volume when compared to other regions in the world, has experienced significant growth in the last decade, both in international and domestic traffic. The sector, in part because of its relatively small size, still faces the challenges of...
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– Opening markets to create opportunities
This paper reviews the role of services in development and growth, the potential role of trade in services as a driver of the productivity performance of sectors that use services as inputs, and the links between services policies and domestic trade costs. Barriers to trade in services have direct...
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We use unique high-frequency Government of Uganda and Government of Rwanda tax administration datasets to map the characteristics of ‘industries without smokestacks’ in East Africa. First, we find firm size appears to be crucial for successful industries without smokestacks in services and agro...
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– Telecommunication and ICT-based services trade
This paper provides a basic understanding of the nature of emerging key information and communication technologies, and establishes the distance of countries from high-quality access to the internet—the necessary threshold one needs to cross in order to make use of such technologies. The paper...
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Significant progress has been made by the East African Community partner states in implementing the East African Community customs union. Trade within the East African Community is now free from import duties, and partner states have adopted a three-band common external tariff. This paper assesses...
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– Mozambique country case study
Under the current international economic conditions, where Asian countries are strong competitors in the manufacturing commodities, low-income countries like Mozambique could attempt to compete in industries without smokestacks. Fruits and vegetables, agro-processing goods, and various tradable...
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– An overview
The South African services sector is large and growing. This coupled with declining employment shares in manufacturing and mining (i.e. deindustrialization) suggests that South Africa is a de facto service-orientated economy. Employment patterns in services reveal a segmentation that is...
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– A service economy in need of an export boost
This paper first summarizes the macroeconomic and trade performance of Senegal, emphasizing the limits of traditional exports. It then focuses on three export sectors which have had some success in the past and have good potential for future growth: tourism, horticulture and information technology...
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Special Economic Zones (SEZs) have been successfully used as an industrial policy tool in many countries. Efforts to create SEZs in Tanzania began in 2002, and were stepped up through the establishment of the Export Processing Zone Authority (EPZA) in 2006. A number of state-run zones are now in...
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– The opportunities and the risks
This paper examines the possible implications for the financial systems of low-income African economies and in particular Tanzania of their stated aspiration to achieve middle-income status. In doing so it finds little evidence that the mere increase of gross domestic product per capita will lead...
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– From mining to oil and gas
This paper compares and contrasts the economic situation in Tanzania during the resurgence of gold and diamond production after 1999, with the situation that is now emerging as the country begins to exploit very large resources of natural gas mainly from the Indian Ocean. The mining boom after 1999...
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– Performance, prospects, and public policy
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 plans...
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Industrial policies have played an important role in successful development. Through these policies, governments intervene in the market’s sectoral allocation of resources and choice of technologies. Earlier industrial policies had a narrow remit and made use of a limited number of instruments. This...
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Despite the use of industrial policies to stimulate economic growth by several successful developers, latecomers have faced mixed experiences. Hence, this paper analyses the industrial policy experience of the electronics industry in Malaysia. A blend of institutions have guided technological...
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This paper suggests that an optimal local content policy in the context of flawed institutions is a more minimal one than those typically pursued by developing countries with recently discovered petroleum reserves. We argue that local content requirements need to be seen as a public expenditure...
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South Korea has gained economic development despite the obstacles it faced as a war-torn country with little natural resources and capital. Poverty, lack of democracy, as well as war and conflict were challenges the country faced in the early 1960s; issues not very different from what many...
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The article explores the various co-ordination mechanisms between the state and the business community in Ghana, and the implications for economic growth in the country. We focus on three periods in the economic history of state–business relations: the immediate postindependence period and the...
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Effective state-business relations (SBRs) have been lacking in industrial policy thinking despite the strong theoretical case for SBRs. The empirical study of state-business relations in developing countries has emerged only recently, with notable contributions starting in the mid-1990s, developing...
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– Considerations for Industrial Policy in Africa
Recent research highlights the considerable potential of industrial policy to support structural transformation in sub-Saharan Africa. Given the importance of the state in industrial policy, this paper considers the implications for these discussions of recent work on state fragility. It argues that...
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– Floriculture and the Metal and Engineering Industries in Ethiopia
Ethiopia represents an excellent case study of recent industrial policy experimentation in Africa. The country is well known for its successful promotion of the cut-flower industry through business-government co-ordination. What is less known is that at nearly the same time it was also using co...
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– Impact of State-Business Relationship on Industrial Performance, 1986-2012
Vietnam’s industrial development since doi moi is a success, but only a partial one. This paper provides a political economy account of Vietnam’s industrial growth since 1986. It shows that the key determinant of Vietnam’s industrial growth lies in the relationship between the party-state and the...
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– Co-ordination Through an Asian Lens
African countries are facing great opportunities but also formidable challenges in accelerating economic growth and sustaining a high level of economic performance. The experiences of East Asian countries may offer valuable insights for African leaders and governments in making concerted efforts to...
Displaying 32 of 35 results