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Publications (45)
– UNU-WIDER provides open access to a wealth of information
The question ‘why is there so little industrialization in Africa?’ has been a key focus of UNU-WIDER researchers and research partners for the last decade. Many Asian economies started their industrialization processes from conditions similar to those that African countries are experiencing today...
Working Paper
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– The role of firm-level relationships in knowledge transfers in Africa and Asia
This study combines evidence from interviews in seven countries with (i) government institutions responsible for attracting foreign direct investment (FDI), (ii) 102 multinational enterprises (MNEs), and (iii) 226 domestic firms linked to these foreign affiliates as suppliers, customers, or...
The international community has a new set of development goals. They reflect Africa’s aspirations much more closely than the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) they replaced. In addition to a maintained focus on the eradication of poverty, their single most important contribution is to recognize...
Working Paper
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– The case for Special Economic Zones in Africa
Firms tend to cluster in close geographic proximity to each other to benefit from reduced transport costs, shared inputs, and productivity spillovers due to learning and technology transfers. Evidence from low-income countries suggests that such agglomeration economies may be substantial in...
– Comparative Studies of Industrial Development in Africa and Emerging Asia
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. While it is possible for economies to grow based on abundant land or natural...
Blog
– Policy proposals
One of the strengths of the new UNU-WIDER and Brookings book Made in Africa is that, in the best sense of the word, its proposals are debatable. It provides evidence and arguments for particular policies. These arguments can be debated and form part of the conversation that allows policymakers can...
Blog
At his swearing in, the new African Development Bank President Akinwumi Adesina set out an agenda for the economic transformation of the continent. Among the five pillars of that agenda—popularly known as the “high fives”—is one that may have surprised many, especially in the donor community...
Blog
The 2016 Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank occur during uncertain times for the “African Growth Miracle.” After more than two decades of sustained economic expansion, growth in sub-Saharan Africa slowed to 3.4 percent in 2015, the weakest performance since 2009...
Blog
Foreign direct investment (FDI) has been praised as an important development tool, especially for countries at low levels of industrial development. Attracting multinational enterprises (MNEs) is seen as a means of introducing high-capability firms into low-capability industrial settings, and, given...
Blog
– Who benefits?
Manufacturing production in both developed and developing economies tends to be highly geographically concentrated in cities and industrial clusters. Firms are drawn together for a variety of reasons, mostly motivated by the desire to reduce the costs of transporting goods, people, and ideas. In...
Blog
– Some new thinking for Africa Industrialization Day
This Friday, November 20 marks yet another “Africa Industrialization Day” by the United Nations. There have now been 25 such events, and they seem to have come and gone with relatively little notice. This year may be different: Africa’s failure to industrialize has come to the attention of a growing...
Research Brief
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What types of businesses benefit or suffer due to geographic clustering? Data available from Cambodia on competition and spillovers—at both village- and commune-level—is useful to answer a number of questions about the effects of clustering and the possible benefits or drawbacks of encouraging the...
Research Brief
pdf
The clustering of industries in specific areas has improved industrial productivity in a number of countries. Since the mid-1990s in Tunisia, concerted policies have been introduced which focus on improving the efficiency of the labour force, and the productivity of firms by creating clusters of...
Working Paper
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– Evidence from Senegalese Manufacturing Plant
The increasing quantity of literature investigating the impact of trade openness on firm efficiency has not yet provided a definite prediction of the direction of causality. This paper investigates how the relationship between exporting and productivity impacts on manufacturing sectors in Senegal...
– Bad Luck or Bad Policy?
16 December 2014 John Page On 20 November 2014 the United Nations celebrated the 25th Africa Industrialization Day. But perhaps ‘celebrate’ is not exactly the right word. Africa’s experience with industrialization over the past quarter century has actually been disappointing. In 2010, sub-Saharan...
Working Paper
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– Implications for the Long Run
Productivity gains are the prime engine of economic growth. This paper uses a rich amount of firms’ accounting information from the Single Information Collecting Centre in Senegal over the period 1998-2011. To investigate the two main obstacles to growth, poor education and poor access to...
Displaying 16 of 45 results