Light Manufacturing in Africa :
Targeted Policies to Enhance Private Investment and Create Jobs

The World Bank's strategy for
Africa's future recognizes the central importance of
industrialization in Sub-Saharan Africa, and the consequent
creation of productive jobs for Africans, which have long
been a preoccupation of African leaders and policy makers.
This book represents an attempt to address these issues. The
book stresses that, while the recent turnaround in
Africa's economic growth is encouraging, this growth
must be accompanied by structural transformation to be
sustainable and to create productive employment for its
people. For many African countries, this transformation
involves lifting workers from low-productivity agriculture
and informal sectors into higher productivity activities.
Light manufacturing can offer a viable solution for
Sub-Saharan Africa, given its potential competitiveness that
is based on low wage costs and abundance of natural
resources that supply raw materials needed for industries.
This study has five features that distinguish it from
previous studies. First, the detailed studies on light
manufacturing at the subsector and product levels in five
countries provide in-depth cost comparisons between Asia and
Africa. Second, building on a growing body of work, the
report uses a wide array of quantitative and qualitative
techniques, including quantitative surveys and value chain
analysis, to identify key constraints to enterprises and to
evaluate differences in firm performance across countries.
Third, the findings that firm constraints vary by country,
sector, and firm size led us to adopt a targeted approach to
identifying constraints and combining market-based measures
and selected government interventions to remove them.
Fourth, the solution to light manufacturing problems cuts
across many sectors and does not lie only in manufacturing
alone. Solving the problem of manufacturing inputs requires
solving specific issues in agriculture, education, and
infrastructure. Fifth, the report draws on experiences and
solutions from other developing countries to inform its
recommendations. The report's goal is to find practical
ways to increase employment and spur job creation in
Sub-Saharan Africa.