The Unassuming Economist

Max Walter, the executive director of Centre for Development Alternatives (a Uganda based independent think tank) writes for the Brookings Institution about the revival of industrial policy for pushing growth in Africa. Governments across the continent are using industrial policy tools to push for industrialization through agro-processing, labour-intensive light manufacturing, natural resource extraction and value addition, some knowledge-intensive manufacturing, and “industries without smokestacks” such as high-value agriculture and tradable services.

The article explores reasons which may have driven this revival and then moves on to explain some notable examples. From Uganda’s National Development Plan (2020) which focuses on the use of several industrial policy tools for bolstering supply chains of cocoa production, to Morocco and South Africa’s policies to upgrade automobile manufacturing industries- examples are aplenty.

The article also delves into the importance of failures of such policies for evidence-based strategic policymaking.

Click here to read the full column.