Industrial Cluster Underperformance in Africa

Why have Sub-Saharan Industrial Clusters exhibited sub-par performance? How can this be mitigated? Why is this important? Kate Meagher analyses(PDF) three Nigerian examples: The Ilorin "traditional weaving cluster" and the Aba "mechanized garment and artisanal shoe clusters" In her summary she states:
"...the processes of economic ungovernance unleashed in all three Nigerian clusters are not a product of cultural failure or of a failure to form global linkages. On the contrary, the three study clusters display a rich tapestry of production and trading networks operating across ethnic and religious divides, overturning local gender-based divisions of labour, and extending across regional and national boundaries into the global trading sphere. These networks have underpinned the development of market-oriented informal institutions such as training and credit systems, a division of labour, subcontracting arrangements, and supply and distribution systems. Although embedded in ties of ethnicity and religion, these African clusters have also provided a framework for change and innovation, for ethnic incorporation and the rationalization of production and labour relations...the failure to pay proper attention to the role of the state is leading to a squandering of the remarkable informal institutional dynamism evident there,and abandoning clustered firms to the immiserizing governance capabilities of clandestine commodity chains. While efficient informal institutions and global linkages constitute valuable resources for cluster development, they cannot ‘substitute for the state’, as so many cluster analysts seem to believe. Efforts to make them do so are destroying and perverting local forms of economic cooperation rather than promoting it..."