Emergent Africa

Industrial Finance for the Twenty-First Century

2026-05-03T22:08:22.604-04:00

Equally applicable to Africa, Heberto Limas-Villers writes:

Traditional financial institutions have been unable to finance these needs, as most bankers are accustomed to investing in less capital-intensive sectors, such as software or real estate, rather than manufacturing. This has left these firms in a difficult middle spot where they need far more capital than what private markets like venture capital typically fund, but their valuations are too low and credit risk is too high for traditional financial markets to finance at an affordable rate. With higher Treasury rates and concerns over an AI bubble, the economic landscape is relatively unforgiving for new industrialists seeking capital.6

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Why Did the Industrial Revolution Happen? - Oliver Kim

2024-12-18T18:55:00.003-05:00

Why did the Industrial Revolution happen? Why, for the past two centuries, have hundreds of millions of people moved off the farm and into factories?

Stop and think about it for a second. Most people, including myself, will likely pull from some scattered half-remembered facts about the Industrial Revolution from high school: something about enclosures, Eli Whitney, the seed drill. Coursework in undergraduate economics is usually no help—the Solow growth model of Econ 101 only has one sector...[more]

China's Previous Attempts at Industrialization

2024-12-18T12:09:00.002-05:00

From the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis:

China’s rise as an industrial power over the past 35 years comes on the heels of several past attempts, which each ended in failure. In an article titled "China's Rapid Rise: From Backward Agrarian Society to Industrial Powerhouse in Just 35 Years," Assistant Vice President and Economist Yi Wen noted that China’s current attempt at industrialization is the nation’s fourth in the past 120 years. What happened with previous attempts?

Africa and the Tyranny of the Cult of Mediocrity - Helen Grange

2024-10-27T19:41:00.000-04:00

It is a piercing indictment of African liberation sensibility when, like some biblical Jews in the long desert to Canaan who demanded that Moses returns them to Egypt, Africans begin to loudly express the wish to return to the colonial days.

One of the most stubborn truths about colonialism as a system and a power structure that was violently imposed on Africa is that it has remained alive and working many decades after the political independence of African countries.

For the majority of Africans, economic and political conditions have remained colonial in what scholars of decolonial consciousness and sensibility have called coloniality. The tragedy of this for Africans is that the durable colonial modes and structures of power have come to be used by leaders that have become native colonisers of their own people in the violent way in which they monopolise power and loot public resources for personal gain. For these scholars, this reality creates a vexing philosophical dilemma that they must confront...[more]

The Historical Evolution of West Africa’s Reversal of Fortune by @Abel_Gaiya

2024-09-19T05:17:00.004-04:00

Abel Gaiya writes:

Abstract
This paper provides an account of the material divergence and reversal of fortune that occurred in West Africa, where material capabilities moved from the Western Sudan to the coast. It also highlights tensions that existed prior and during the reversal that would become important in shaping inter-societal, inter-ethnic and inter-racial relations in West Africa during the colonial and postcolonial periods. The paper focuses on the evolution from the Saharan (11th to 17th century) to the “Second Atlantic period” (1960s till present). The outcomes of this divergence and reversal have been various fragilities in West Africa, including political instability, terrorism, persistent poverty and poor human development outcomes. Measures such as military rule, democracy, lagging regions’ elite capture of political power, administrative unit proliferation or decentralization, foreign aid, the expansion of the shariah and violent religious extremism, have not worked in reversing this situation. West Africa therefore needs new movements and ideologies appropriate for its context in order to overcome its peculiar challenges...[more]

The rise and fall of Africa’s bureaucratic bourgeoisie

2024-06-11T18:47:00.004-04:00

From Rebecca Simson:

In 1961 Frantz Fanon scathingly characterised the emerging African elite as a bourgeoisie of the civil service. Many others have since described Africa’s public sector employees as a privileged rentier class that grew disproportionately large in relation to the continent’s under-developed private sector. Is this characterisation accurate? Using household budget survey and administrative data from Kenya and Tanzania, this paper aims to situate public sector employees in two African countries within their respective national income distributions and establish the share of highincome households that were headed by public servants. It finds that while public sector employees formed a considerable share of the top 1% - 0.1% at independence, their share of the broader middle class was never that large and fell substantially over the postcolonial era. In 1975 Kenyan public sector employees comprised roughly 36% of the top income decile, but by 1994 this ratio had dropped to 30% and by 2005/06 to 17%. In Tanzania the public sector share of the top decile fell from an estimated 25% in 1969 to 14% in 2011/12. In both countries moreover, public sector-headed households relied on multiple income sources to meet household consumption needs during the economic crises of the 1980s and early 1990s. Without recourse to secondary incomes from farming, businesses or other employment, public sectorheaded households would have seen a considerably larger relative income decline. The corollary to the declining share of public sector employees among high income earners was an increase in the share of private sector employees and business owners at the top of the income distribution. This suggests that after a long teething period, East Africa’s private sector may finally be coming into its own...[more]

Vocational Education in Africa. Anyone? by Jeff Megayo

2024-01-29T10:20:00.003-05:00

Jeff Megayo writes:

...there’s been a noticeable focus in getting Africans educated, but the evolution in education hasn’t necessarily translated into tangible employment gains for people, as we can note from current employment data presented above. Unemployment and underemployment represent severe challenges for the African youth, but they also have an adverse impact on the continent’s economy...[more]

A Comprehensive Strategy to Strengthen Bioimaging in Africa through the Africa Microscopy Initiative - @Nature

2023-10-29T19:29:00.005-04:00

In Nature:

The Africa Microscopy Initiative (AMI) aims to promote the use of microscopy in biomedical research through facilitated access to instruments and expertise, and via training and networking opportunities. By coupling technology dissemination with expertise and training, AMI is designed to serve as a crucible for the sustainable development of imaging expertise across Africa...[more]

The Developmental Role of Importers by Abel Gaiya

2023-09-06T16:23:00.002-04:00

Abel Gaiya writes:

There has been a tendency within the development literature to characterize importers ofdomestic-substitutable goods as either neutral agents (as in the neoclassical comparativeadvantage framework where comparative advantage-based imports and exports are bothwelfare-enhancing), as passive agents whose interests are inevitably and developmentally goneagainst in an import-substitution strategy, or as anti- developmental (“comprador”) agents of dependency...[more]

“How Can I Liberate the Slaves?" - The Neglected Tradition of Developmental Abolitionism - Abel Gaiya

2023-09-06T16:11:00.003-04:00

From Abel Gaiya:

Abstract

The abolition of slavery in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was a long process. In terms of the economic views of abolitionists, there has been an excessive focus on the economic ideas of liberal abolitionists and their approach to “Civilization, Christianity, and Commerce.” However, there was a “developmental abolitionism” that has received little attention. Afro-American Martin R. Delany and Liberian James S. Payne were writers who approached abolitionism through this developmentalism. They favored more interventionist measures aimed at building the material power and national autonomy of Black nations to undercut the power of slave-using African chiefs, to provide indigenous Africans with employment, and to undermine the profitability of slave-based cotton production in the Americas. They also implicitly and indirectly approached labor scarcity with solutions ranging from promoting labor-saving technology to cultivating national prosperity that would improve emigration to Africa or increase birth rates...[more]

Industrialization and Democracy by Sam van Noort

2023-09-01T11:18:00.002-04:00

Abstract

I provide a new theory of the relationship between economic development and democ- racy. I argue that a large share of employment in manufacturing (i.e., industrialization) makes mass mobilization both more likely to occur and more costly to suppress. This increases the power of the masses relative to autocratic elites, making democracy more likely. Novel manufacturing employment data for 145 countries over 170 years (1845{ 2015) supports this hypothesis. First, all highly developed countries in the West and East Asia democratized when approximately 25% of their workforce was employed in manufacturing, and virtually no other country has ever reached this level without even- tually becoming a well-functioning democracy. Second, industrialization is strongly correlated with democracy, even after accounting for two-way xed e ects and other economic determinants of democracy (e.g., income and inequality). Last, unlike with other economic determinants the e ect occurs on both transitions and consolidations, and is equally large after WWII...[more]

Coevolution of Capitalism and Political Representation: The Choice of Electoral Systems

2023-09-01T11:13:00.004-04:00

Abstract

Protocorporatist West European countries in which economic interests were collectively organized adopted PR in the first quarter of the twentieth century, whereas liberal countries in which economic interests were not collectively organized did not. Political parties, as Marcus Kreuzer points out, choose electoral systems. So how do economic interests translate into party political incentives to adopt electoral reform? We argue that parties in protocorporatist countries were “representative” of and closely linked to economic interests. As electoral competition in single member districts increased sharply up to World War I, great difficulties resulted for the representative parties whose leaders were seen as interest committed. They could not credibly compete for votes outside their interest without leadership changes or reductions in interest influence. Proportional representation offered an obvious solution, allowing parties to target their own voters and their organized interest to continue effective influence in the legislature. In each respect, the opposite was true of liberal countries. Data on party preferences strongly confirm this model. (Kreuzer's historical criticisms are largely incorrect, as shown in detail in the online supplementary Appendix.)...[more]

The coevolution of economic and political development from monarchy to democracy Fali Huang

2023-09-01T11:10:00.004-04:00

Abstract

This article establishes a unified political economy model to analyze the democratization process from monarchy to oligarchy and to democracy in the context of dynamic economic development. As the predominant source of wealth evolves from land to physical capital and finally to human capital, the relative economic and hence coercive power of land owners, capitalists, and workers shifts accordingly, inducing the transition of the political system where political power is expanded from landlords to capitalists and finally to workers. A smooth transition through political compromise facilitates efficient allocation of savings in physical capital followed by efficient investment in human capital...[more]

Culture, institutions and the industrialization process by Nouhoum Touré

2023-09-01T11:06:00.004-04:00

Abstract

We propose a general equilibrium model where culture and institutions coevolve with the industrialization process. Institutions are defined as the balance of power between two social classes: workers and elites. Within the elite, there are two cultural groups: entrepreneurs and nonentrepreneurs, with culture defined as the proportion of each group. The evolution of both culture and institutions feeds back with the scope of industrialization. This mutual interplay may lead to multiple equilibria. In particular, an economy in which the entrepreneurial culture is not widespread and/or workers have little power may become trapped in a preindustrial regime. A positive productivity shock makes it possible to leave this equilibrium and generate a democratization movement. Nevertheless, depending on the initial conditions, this movement may or may not be followed by the cultural transformations that are required for industrialization. Finally, we discuss England’s industrialization experiences in light of our results...[more]

On the Importance of African Traditional Religion for Economic Behavior - NBER

2023-08-23T21:56:00.002-04:00

Within the field of economics, despite being widespread, African traditional religions tend to be perceived as unimportant and ignored when studying economic decision-making. This study tests whether this presumption is correct. Using daily data on business decisions and performance of beer sellers in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, we study the importance of traditional religious beliefs for economic behavior and outcomes. Beer sellers perceive the risk of theft in their shops to be higher than it actually is, causing them to hold lower inventories, more frequent stock-outs, and reduced profits. We facilitate randomly-timed access to commonly-used, but typically prohibitively expensive rituals, which reduce the perceived risk of theft. We find that the rituals partially correct the beliefs about the risk of theft for sellers who report believing in the ritual’s efficacy. These sellers purchase more inventory, experience fewer stock-outs, and have larger sales, revenues, and profits. To distinguish the belief in the efficacy of the ritual from other incidental effects of participation, we analyze these outcomes for sellers who do not believe in the ritual. For these individuals, we find none of the observed effects. The findings provide evidence of the importance of African traditional religions, demonstrating that they can influence behavior and outcomes that are important for economic development...[more]

The Evolution of the Aro Confederacy in Southeastern Nigeria, 1690-1720 by Apollos O. Nwauwa

2023-08-13T21:14:00.001-04:00

Abstract

This work analyzes the unique evolution of the Aro state (Arochukwu) in southeastern Nigeria in ca. 1690-1720. The state emerged from the union of three distinct ethnic groups -Igbo, Ibibio, and Akpa -but the traditions have been distorted by colonial officials/anthropologists for both racial and administrative convenience. This study attempts to correct the misrepresentations and offer a more plausible analysis by correlating the process of the development of the Aro confederacy with the theories of state formation. Because of the inherent defects of the conventional assumptions, this work advances an alternative interpretation based on the judicious mix of the scarce resource, Marxist, and multiethnic hypotheses. Granted that most of the traditional theories of state formation exhibit relevance, both class and ethnicity were powerful internal forces which not only stimulated change but also determined the patterns of inter-and intragroup relations within the Aro society...[more]

Beyond products: The role of export activities in driving development - World Bank

2023-08-12T10:54:00.003-04:00

The question of what countries trade, and why, is a complex one, and it's important to understand that a country's comparative advantage doesn't always align with the types of products it exports. Comparative advantage refers to a country's relative efficiency in producing certain goods, based on factors like land, labor, capital, and technology. However, in today's globalized economy, production is often spread across multiple countries, which can make it difficult to determine what a country actually contributes to its exports...[more]

African needs a ton of growth to catch up - How much economic growth is necessary to reduce global poverty substantially? by Max Roser ( @MaxCRoser )

2023-08-09T13:15:00.005-04:00

Max Roser writes:

Billions of people in the world are living in poverty. Adjusted for the purchasing power in each country, 85% of the world population live on less than $30 per day.

In an earlier post I said that ‘if we want global poverty to decline substantially then the economies that are home to the poorest billions of people need to grow.’ In this post I want to make this statement more concrete. I will look at the depth of global poverty today to get a quantitative sense of just how much the global income distribution would need to change to reduce global poverty substantially...[more]

The Industrial Revolution That Almost Was - Everything you never thought of asking about the proto-industrialization of Bengal by Étienne Fortier-Dubois

2023-08-08T22:14:00.005-04:00

Étienne Fortier-Dubois writes:

History is gigantic along multiple dimensions, so it’s hardly surprising that there are countless combinations of time and place that you or I have never considered. Occasionally, though, I come across a blindspot that is perplexing: an event that seems significant, but that almost no one seems to be thinking about.

The proto-industrialized period of Bengal is one such blindspot. I’m guessing that, unless you come from South Asia or are a really big history nerd, you probably have no idea what I even mean by “the proto-industrialized period of Bengal.”...[more]

Why Economics Alone Cannot Explain West Africa’s Slow Development - Abel Gaiya

2023-08-07T15:06:00.003-04:00

Abel Gaiya writes:

Many West African countries have disparities between their northern and southern regions that conventional economic literature can neither explain nor solve. Across West Africa, there is a growing case for thinking about these shared disparities from a regional lens. ...[more]

An Opportunity for Africa? - Scientific discovery in the age of artificial intelligence

2023-08-03T09:34:00.001-04:00

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) is being increasingly integrated into scientific discovery to augment and accelerate research, helping scientists to generate hypotheses, design experiments, collect and interpret large datasets, and gain insights that might not have been possible using traditional scientific methods alone. Here we examine breakthroughs over the past decade that include self-supervised learning, which allows models to be trained on vast amounts of unlabelled data, and geometric deep learning, which leverages knowledge about the structure of scientific data to enhance model accuracy and efficiency. Generative AI methods can create designs, such as small-molecule drugs and proteins, by analysing diverse data modalities, including images and sequences. We discuss how these methods can help scientists throughout the scientific process and the central issues that remain despite such advances. Both developers and users of AI toolsneed a better understanding of when such approaches need improvement, and challenges posed by poor data quality and stewardship remain. These issues cut across scientific disciplines and require developing foundational algorithmic approaches that can contribute to scientific understanding or acquire it autonomously, making them critical areas of focus for AI innovation...[more]

A Colossal mistake? - keeping Africa's Colonial Borders - "Why Redraw the Map of Africa? - A Moral and Legal Inquiry" by Makau wa Mutua (@makaumutua)

2023-07-29T18:59:00.005-04:00

A 1995 paper from Makau wa Mutua

INTRODUCTION

The last decade of the twentieth century has seen a sharp increase in the number of new states, many of them a result of the end of the Cold War and the demise of European communism.' Not since decolonization have sovereignty and self-determination been such powerful currencies in international discourse. Now the protracted problems of the postcolonial African state have raised anew the meaning of state legitimacy and brought forward disturbing questions about the concepts of territorial sovereignty and statehood. The juridical statehood attained with the decolonization of the colonial state has in the last four decades proven inadequate.It is becoming increasingly apparent that these concepts and principles may have trapped Africa in a detrimental time capsule; they now seem to be straightjackets with timebombs ready to explode. The imposition of the nation-state through colonization balkanized Africa into ahistorical units and forcibly yanked it into the Age of Europe,permanently disfiguring it.6 Unlike their European counterparts, African states and borders are distinctly artificial and are not "'the visible expression of the age-long efforts of [the indigenous] peoples to achieve political adjustment between themselves and the physical conditions in which they live.' "' Colonization interrupted that historical and evolutionary process. Since then Africa has attempted, often unsuccessfully, to live up to and within these new formulations; all too frequently the consequences have been disastrous...[more]

Industrial Transformations by Isabel Estevez

2023-07-28T22:38:00.003-04:00

The latest US experiment with industrial policy—comprised primarily by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act—has sparked outright opposition and pleas for restraint, but also calls for far more ambitious action...[more]

Why Private Entrepreneurs need Capable Governments by Sérgio G. Lazzarini

2023-07-26T12:13:00.004-04:00

The public debate is rife with polarized views of how to deliver essential services such as education, health, and security. While some tout private innovation and operation as a way to supplant bad governments, others warn that private firms maximize profits at the expense of socially oriented service attributes. Many cross-sector collaborations, which arguably mix public and private objectives, have also been short-lived and insufficient to address pressing problems that require scalable solutions...[more]

Shifting Sands of Supply: Africa, China, and the Global Race for Rare Earth Elements by Shane Tews and Nii Simmonds

2023-07-26T11:44:00.007-04:00

Shane Tews and Nii Simmonds write:

When did you last think about what materials went into the screen you’re reading this on? Rare earth elements (REEs) are truly the magic that powers our modern world.

REEs are 17 elements essential for producing more than 200 high-tech products such as batteries, magnets, screen displays, semiconductors, and other electronic devices. They are particularly important to today’s global communications, or information and communications technology (ICT), as they are essential for the fiber optic cables, lasers, and other components used in telecommunications and internet connectivity...[more]