Professor Tarp has four decades of experience in academic and applied development economics research and teaching. His field experience covers more than two decades of in-country work in 35 countries across Africa and the developing world more...
Learning to Compete seeks to answer a seemingly simple but puzzling question: why is there so little industry in Africa?
Industry—including modern services and agro-industry—is often the key to job creation, poverty reduction, and growth. Most Asian economies began their industrialization processes with initial conditions quite similar to many African countries today, yet, while Asia had explosive industrial growth, Africa’s shares of global manufacturing value added and exports have fallen. To sustain growth Africa must learn to compete in global markets.
Team
Focal point: Finn Tarp, John Page
Assistant: Lisa Winkler
Communications: Annett Victorero
In collaboration with
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The ins and outs of African industrialization: UNU-WIDER provides open access to a wealth of informationThe question ‘why is there so little industrialization in Africa?’ has been a key focus of UNU-WIDER researchers and research partners for the last...
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Made in Africa – the future of production on the continentThe international community has a new set of development goals. They reflect Africa’s aspirations much more closely than the Millennium Development...
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Made in Africa - Learning to Compete in Industry: Policy proposalsOne 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...
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Getting a high five - Advancing Africa’s transformative agendaAt his swearing in, the new African Development Bank President Akinwumi Adesina set out an agenda for the economic transformation of the continent...
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Commodities, industry, and the African Growth MiracleThe 2016 Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank occur during uncertain times for the “African Growth Miracle.” After...
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Understanding FDI spillover mechanismsForeign direct investment (FDI) has been praised as an important development tool, especially for countries at low levels of industrial development...
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Industrial clusters: Who benefits?Manufacturing production in both developed and developing economies tends to be highly geographically concentrated in cities and industrial clusters...
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Made in Africa: Some new thinking for Africa Industrialization DayThis Friday, November 20 marks yet another “Africa Industrialization Day” by the United Nations. There have now been 25 such events, and they seem to...
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Africa's Failure to Industrialize: 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...
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Learning to Compete: Lessons from Vietnam – An Interview with Carol Newman28 May 2014 In this interview Carol Newman discusses the success of the Vietnamese economic transformation and lessons which can be drawn for Africa...
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What did we Learn at the L2C Conference about Industrial Development and Policy in Africa?22 August 2013 Roger Williamson Given the high growth rates since 2000 and low labour costs, Africa could develop manufacturing industry, agro...
Context
Main subject
Theme: Past, 2010-11