Manufacturing and Diversification

Gumisai Mutume writes about the need to renew emphasis on manufacturing:
"...Building -- or rebuilding -- African industry is a major challenge. Across the developing world, countries that have successfully shifted from producing raw materials into manufacturing have done so in stages. They started by moving into the processing of primary commodities, a process known as vertical diversification. Some African countries, for instance, are now exporting leather instead of just hides, textiles in place of cotton, or paper, plywood or furniture instead of logs. Côte d'Ivoire, now a major fish- and wood- processing country, has managed to do this. So has Senegal, which also shifted from simply selling raw fish into processing and packaging its produce."Our entrepreneurs," says Botswana's President Festus Mogae, "should look for technology from partners to enable them to process their products and sell value-added goods abroad."..."