Industrialization and Sub-Saharan Africa:The Asian Experience

Charles C. Soludo wrote;

It is evident that the development challenge facing Africa requires major strategic, creative thinking. The SSA needs to do certain things very differently, but the question is how? A dominant view is that the best chance of sustained development in Africa should be pursued within the framework of a growth-promoting and market-accelerating model, but which is human-centred to address the pervasive poverty of the region...
With regard to specific area of strategies for rapid industrialization, several questions emerge. For example, where would Africa’s comparative advantage lie in the future, and how can such comparative advantage be “created” — a la the Asian way — without being constrained by the GATTified world? Should Africa start small (with little things that have lost competitiveness, and as Ojimi(Yoshishisa Ojimi a former vice-minister of MITI) argued in the case of Japan — areas that have lowest productivity and lowest returns), or, should it go high-tech. and seek to compete all the way? In the latter case, how would SSA do it, and with what technology and market penetration strategies?
It has become fashionable to suggest diversification of the export base into manufactures, but the challenge is to demonstrate how such an option is viable and that chosen sectors/products are potentially competitive. In essence, while it is important to learn how the Asians dealt with the past, it is even more important to understand how some of the countries (especially those in “transition”) are coping with current constraints and opportunities. For example, a lot of lessons could be learnt from other emerging industrializers (e.g., China, Vietnam, etc.) in terms of their innovations in interpreting and exploiting the provisions of the GATT/WTO and their strategies for “economic diplomacy.”