Asian Industrialization and Africa

Reviewed by Saha Santosh, Asian Industrialization and Africa is a collection of essays that offer a "directional" approach to achieving industrial growth within the continent. E. Wayne Nafziger's case study states the following:
"...Japan learned a lesson in the 1870's that many contemporary African countries have still not learned or only learned recently:that importing replicas of Western institutions and capital intensive technology may exacerbate unemployment and balance of payments problems if the local country lacks the capital and skills needed...Meiji Japan imitated,borrowed from, and modified techniques and approaches from advanced Western economies. Aquestion today is: Can Sub-Saharan Africa be as successful emulating,borrowing, and adapting innovations and procedures from the West and Japan?If anything, the contemporary Sub-Sahara has to be even more cautious than Meiji Japan in importing foreign capital and technology. Since present-day Sub-Saharan countries are even more technologically backward relative to the most technologically advanced economies than Japan was relative to the West in the late nineteenth century,it is probably more difficult to adapt technology to local conditions and indigenous production.For example some foreign productivity-raising textile technologies available to early developing Japan were labor-using while most technologies for today's latecoming Sub-Saharan African countries are labor-saving..."