Download or read book Is African Manufacturing Skill constrained written by Howard Pack and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 1999 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Continued efforts to develop high-level industrial skills in Sub-Saharan African countries may be wasteful without a more competitive environment in the industrial sector. But lack of such skills may limit the benefits to the industrial sector from future liberalization. As a result, the supply response to improved incentives may be weak.
Download or read book Is African Manufacturing Skill Constrained written by Howard Pack and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 20 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Continued efforts to develop high-level industrial skills in Sub-Saharan African countries may be wasteful without a more competitive environment in the industrial sector. But lack of such skills may limit the benefits to the industrial sector from future liberalization. As a result, the supply response to improved incentives may be weak.Total factor productivity has been low in most of Sub-Saharan Africa. It is often said that the binding constraint on African industrial development is the inadequate supply of technologically capable workers. And many cross-country studies imply that the low level of human capital in Africa is an important source of low growth in per capita income.The results of Pack and Paxson's study do not necessarily conflict with this view. They indicate that in noncompetitive industrial sectors with little inflow of new technology, the contribution of technological abilities, however it is measured, is limited.If liberalization of the economy generated greater competition, or if export growth were accelerated - permitting the import of inputs embodying new technology - local skills could contribute significantly more in raising output.The experience of other countries also suggests that as the economy opens to flows of international knowledge - whether through technology transfers or through informal transfers from purchasers of exports - the technological capacity of local industry becomes important.The policy implications of this analysis are clear: Without the prospect of a more competitive environment, continued efforts to develop high-level industrial skills may be wasteful. But the absence of such skills may limit the benefits to the industrial sector from future liberalization, as a result of which the supply response to improved incentives may be weak.This paper - a product of Public Economics, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to analyze the effect of public policies on industrial productivity. The authors may be contacted at [email protected] or [email protected].
Download or read book Industries Without Smokestacks written by Richard S. Newfarmer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study prepared by the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER)
Download or read book Light Manufacturing in Africa written by Hinh T. Dinh and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2012-02-24 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines how light manufacturing can offer a viable solution for Sub-Saharan Africa's need for structural transformation and productive job creation, given its potential competitiveness based on low wage costs and an abundance of natural resources that supply raw materials needed for industries. Based on five different analytical tools and data sources, the book examines in detail the binding constraints in each of the subsectors relevant for Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA): apparel, leather goods, metal products, agribusiness, and wood products. Ethiopia is used as an example, with Vietnam as a comparator and China as a benchmark, and with insights from Tanzania and Zambia used to draw out lessons more broadly for SSA. The book recommends a program of focused policies to exploit Africa's latent comparative advantage in a particular group of light manufacturing industries - especially leather goods, garments, and agricultural processing. These industries hold the prospect of initiating rapid, substantial, and potentially self-propelling waves of rising output, employment, productivity, and exports that can push countries like Ethiopia on a path of structural change of the sort recently achieved in both China and Vietnam. The timing for these initiatives is very appropriate as China's comparative advantage in these areas is diminishing due to steep cost increases associated with rising wages and non-wage labor costs, escalating land prices, and mounting regulatory costs. Five features of this book distinguish it from previous studies. First, the detailed work on light manufacturing at the subsector and product levels in five countries provide in-depth cost comparisons between Asia and Africa that can be used as a framework for future studies. Second, the book uses a wide array of quantitative and qualitative techniques to identify key constraints to enterprises and to evaluate firm performance differences across countries. Third, the findings that firm constraints vary by country, sector, and firm size led to a focused approach to identifying constraints and combining market-based measures and select government intervention to remove them. Fourth, the solution to light manufacturing problems cuts across many sectors: solving the manufacturing inputs problem requires solving specific issues in agriculture, education, and infrastructure. African countries cannot afford to wait until all the problems across sectors are resolved. Fifth, the book draws on experiences and solutions from other developing countries to inform its recommendations. This book will be very valuable to African policy makers, professional economists, and anyone interested in the economic development, industrialization, and structural transformation of developing countries.
Download or read book Performance of Manufacturing Firms in Africa written by Hinh T. Dinh and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2012-08-21 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents empirical analyses of manufacturing firm performance in Africa based on the World Bank Enterprise Survey and on a one-time quantitative survey conducted for the World Bank by the Center for the Study of African Economies of Oxford University.
Download or read book Structural Aspects of Manufacturing in Sub Saharan Africa written by Tyler Biggs and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 1996 with total page 86 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: World Bank Discussion Paper No. 346. Assesses the findings from firm-level surveys conducted in seven countries--Burundi, Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe--that covered a wide range of issues, including entrepreneurship, labor markets, technological capabilities, financial markets, infrastructure, regulation, and conflict resolution mechanisms. The paper also looks at Africa's competitive position in world markets and constraints on its exports.
Download or read book The African Manufacturing Firm written by Ata Mazaheri and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-11-02 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book provides a useful source of greater understanding of African manufacturing firms and the perplexing lack of widespread industrial growth during the post-colonial decades.
Download or read book Industrial Clusters and Micro and Small Enterprises in Africa written by Yutaka Yoshino and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2011 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The World Bank, in collaboration with others, recently conducted a study on Africa's domestic enterprises to improve the understanding of the constraints micro and small enterprises in Africa face in improving productivity and expanding their markets. In Africa, there are stark performance gaps between domestically owned enterprises and foreign-owned enterprises in terms of sales performance, productivity, and ability to reach distant markets. Among others, size appears to be a dominant factor in explaining the gap. Against this background, the study analyzes how naturally formed industrial clusters - concentrations of enterprises engaged in same or closely related industrial activities in specific locations - could potentially mitigate constraints Africa's micro and small enterprises face and enhance their business performance. The study is one of the first comprehensive quantitative inquiries on industrial clusters in Africa.
Download or read book Structural Change and Industrial Development in the BRICS written by Wim A. Naudé and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 523 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text examines the role of structural change in the economic development of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) with a consideration for the role of industry, and in particular manufacturing.
Download or read book Youth Employment in Sub Saharan Africa written by Deon Filmer and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2014-01-24 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The series is sponsored by the Agence Francaise de Developpement and the World Bank."
Download or read book Routledge Handbook of Industry and Development written by John Weiss and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-09-16 with total page 620 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Handbook of Industry and Development is a global overview of industrialisation. Each chapter will provide readers with contemporary insights into this this essential aspect of economic development. Industrialisation has been at the forefront of discussion on economic development since the earliest days of development economics. But over the last fifty years, the manufacturing sectors of different countries and regions have grown at strikingly different rates. In 1960 developing countries took a very small share of global manufacturing production. Today the position had changed radically with fast growth of manufacturing in many parts of what was originally the developing world, particularly in China and the rest of East Asia. On the other hand, countries in Africa and parts of Latin America have been largely left behind by this process of industrialisation. This volume aims to illuminate this uneven development and takes stock of the current issues that hinder and support industrialisation in low and middle income economies. This Handbook is a collection of chapters on different aspects of industrialisation experience in a range of countries. Key themes include, the role of manufacturing in growth, the nature of structural change at different stages of development, the role of manufacturing in employment creation, alternative options for trade and industrial policy, the key role of technology and technical change, and the impact of globalisation and the spread of global value chains and foreign direct investment on prospects for industrialisation. Several chapters discuss individual country experiences with examples from India, Mexico, South Africa and Tanzania, as well as an overview of African industrialisation. This authoritative Handbook will be a key reference source for those studying or wishing to understand contemporary economic development. Offering inspiration and direction for future research, this landmark volume will be of crucial importance to all development economics scholars and researchers.
Download or read book Firm s Resources as Determinants of Manufacturing Efficiency in Tanzania written by Esther Kokunywanisa Ishengoma and published by LIT Verlag Münster. This book was released on 2005 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Learning Capability Building and Innovation for Development written by G. Dutrénit and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-08-22 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today, a large number of scholars studying development understand this process as involving learning and capability building. Capability building is an active, not a passive, process. It requires a purposeful effort from the learner's side, with support and commitment on allocation of time and resources toward learning activities. This process implies the possibility of failure as well as success, as we also learn from failures. A global cast of academics and policy makers examines economic development as a process of learning and technological accumulation, showing how economic development is a process involving creative destruction. While markets and market competition play major roles in structuring the development process, non-market institutions and government policies matter.
Download or read book Global Integration and Technology Transfer written by Bernard M. Hoekman and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2006-04-27 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The importance of international technology diffusion (ITD) for economic development can hardly be overstated. Both the acquisition of technology and its diffusion foster productivity growth. Developing countries have long sought to use both national policies and international agreements to stimulate ITD. The 'correct' policy intervention, if any, depends critically upon the channels through which technology diffuses internationally and the quantitative effects of the various diffusion processes on efficiency and productivity growth. Neither is well understood. New technologies may be embodied in goods and transferred through imports of new varieties of differentiated products or capital goods and equipment, they may be obtained through exposure to foreign buyers or foreign investors or they may be acquired through arms-length trade in intellectual property, e.g., licensing contracts. 'Global Integration and Technology Transfer' uses cross-country and firm level panel data sets to analyze how specific activities exporting, importing, FDI, joint ventures impact on productivity performance.
Download or read book Alleviating Soil Fertility Constraints to Increased Crop Production in West Africa written by A. Uzo Mokwunye and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tropical Africa escaped from the glaciers that covered the temperate parts of the world during the Ice Age. The legacy is that most of the parent materials of the soils of tropical Africa are old, highly weathered and devoid of bases and phosphate-bearing minerals. Traditional farming systems which were relatively stable and sustainable relied on long fallow periods after one to two years of cropping to maintain the productive capacity of the soils. In recent times and especially in densely populated areas, a sizeable class of 'landless' farmers have begun to cultivate marginal lands or to invade the 'forest reserves' thereby exacerbating the problems of land and environ mental degradation. of soil fertility that will facilitate the production of adequate quantities of the principle Maintaining a level staples has become a major challenge to agricultural scientists in tropical Africa. To increase the nutrient supplying power of soils requires the inputs of fertilizers. These can be organic or inorganic. The efficiency with which these externally supplied inputs can increase agricultural production and reduce soil and environmental deterioration is dependent on the ability of scientists to determine the right types and quantities of the products to apply to each soil, crop and cropping system as well as the ability of farmers to acquire requisite farm manage ment skills.
Download or read book International Institutions and Multinational Enterprises written by John-ren Chen and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides rigorous analysis of the wide range of questions surrounding the role of international institutions in governing global business, especially multinational enterprises (MNEs). The analysis, both theoretical and empirical, focuses on the corporate governance of MNEs and to what extent their management takes into account the negative effects of their activities. Also discussed are: how nation states and international institutions control the activities of MNEs, and how the role and strategies of international institutions can be changed to minimise any negative effects without hampering the positive aspects and effects of MNEs. Besides the general questions of corporate governance, the fundamental differences between shareholder and stakeholder concepts are also carefully examined. A number of moral aspects in corporate governance are touched upon including the effect of international entrepreneurial activities on wages, labour markets and environmental issues. International Institutions and Multinational Enterprises is a fascinating book that will appeal to scholars of international and development economics, international business management and institutional economics. NGOs and policymakers involved in international trade, monetary and development policy formulation and associated institutions will also find much to interest them.
Download or read book Technology Learning and Innovation written by Linsu Kim and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2000-07-24 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume leading scholars analyze in a series of original essays and commentaries how newly industrializing countries (NICs), particularly those in East Asia, have transformed themselves from technologically backward and poor to relatively modern and affluent economies over the past thirty years. The contributors provide interesting theoretical perspectives and offer insights into the process of technological progress at both the macro and micro levels in these countries. The essays review how firms, particularly those in electronics and automobiles, have dynamically accumulated technological capabilities at the micro level, how public policies have shaped the process of technological progress at the national level, and what problems some of these countries face today at both levels. In addition, the volume provides a comparison of East Asian NIC s with their Latin American counterparts. The discussion also offers useful lessons for policies in other developing countries.
