Vincent Palmade

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

The World Banks strategy for Africas 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 Africas 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 reports goal is to find practical ways to increase employment and spur job creation in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Reforming the Investment Climate: Lessons for Practitioners

Drawing from more than 25 case studies, this book shows that reform often requires paying as much attention to dealing with the politics and institutional dimensions as to designing policy substance. While there is no single recipe or manual for reform, the authors highlight three broad lessons. The first is to recognize and seize opportunities for reform. Crisis and new governments are important catalysts, but so is the competition generated by trade integration and new benchmarking information. The second is to invest early in the politics of reform. Public education can help gain wide acceptance for reform, while pilot programs can be valuable for demonstrating the benefits and feasibility of change. And the third is to treat implementation and monitoring as an integral part of the reform process and not merely as an afterthought. In the absence of public sector reform, reformers can draw on private sector change management techniques to revitalize institutions and put in place mechanisms to monitor and sustain reform. The book provides an emerging checklist for reformers and identifies areas for future work.

South Asia’s turn : policies to boost competitiveness and create the next export powerhouse

South Asia is at a turning point. The region is benefiting from a confluence of positive internal and external forces. South Asian countries are starting to receive the competitiveness dividends from the economic reforms and public investments in infrastructure and education carried over the last 25 years. Rising labor costs in East Asia are steering global investors towards South Asia as a possible cheaper alternative. This report looks in detail at the drivers and constraints impacting South Asia’s competitiveness. It outlines the four policy levers which will help the region become more globally competitive across a broader spectrum of industries,accelerating growth and reducing poverty, especially for women. The report combines a critical mass of quantitative analysis, using the latest data and tools available, with a rich set of industry and company case studies to draw new insights on what South Asia needs to do to boost competitiveness. And it proposes a number of specific policy solutions drawn from relevant international good practices (including from within the region). The authors very much hope that this report will help the countries of South Asia, individually as well as collectively, take a turn toward realizing their great competitiveness potential. The full report together with the extended versions of the four industry case studies are freely available online at: www.worldbank.org/SouthAsiaCompetes.