Manufacturing panacea for Africa’s industralisation

Lazarus Sauti

Manufacturing – the business of making goods in large quantities in a factory – is crucial for the industrialisation of any nation.

African leaders must therefore collectively ensure the complete transformation of the manufacturing terrain in the great African continent from conventional to advanced methods.

The book that sets out to unravel the contradictions of a country where a rich, diverse resource base co-exists with endemic poverty ‘Beyond the Enclave: Towards a Pro-Poor and Inclusive Development Strategy for Zimbabwe’ notes: “The success of the manufacturing sector is central to economic growth in a number of countries.

“It has a key role in the growth process because of its ability to generate technical progress, which raises the overall productivity of the economy.

“In addition, the manufacturing sector has strong linkages with the rest of the economy and has the potential for capital accumulation – the process of acquiring more assets that can be used to create more wealth.”

Accordingly, African countries should use manufacturing as a panacea for the continent’s industrialisation revolution. This means that the adoption of Advanced Manufacturing Technology (AMT), its application, practice and dissemination is a prerequisite for the industrial revolution in the continent.

To improve the manufacturing sector, African countries should know that the adoption of market-based policies alone may not produce the desired effects.

Consequently, they can learn from East Asian countries, where the governments intervened through strategic industrial and export policies that were highly selective, specifically targeted, and dependent on the eventual attainment of economic efficiency and international competitiveness.

More so, African governments should come up with incentives to reward companies that manufacture and export more, employ more people and invest in the latest manufacturing technology. There should be clear benchmarks for rewarding success.

It is also critical for African governments to play active roles in the provision of adequate infrastructure (water, electricity, telecommunications, roads, railways, and ports). Public Private Partnerships (PPP) can also be used to provide infrastructure and improve the manufacturing sector in the continent.

According to the book ‘Beyond the Enclave: Towards a Pro-Poor and Inclusive Development Strategy for Zimbabwe’, the ability of manufacturers to compete depends to a large extent on technological transfer.

African governments should therefore encourage technological innovation by subsiding research and development, providing technical extension services and information, and creating a technology infrastructure to help African firms do quality control, testing, design development, production ‘trouble-shooting’ and process adaptation.        

This also means that the continent should be committed to ensure complete and effective transformation of the teaching, learning and practice of science, technology, innovation and engineering.

This is so because science and technology are the backbone or the vehicle for Africa’s economic development.

To revolutionise the manufacturing sector in the great African continent, political leaders should support existing industries and at the same time promote and encourage the development of small-scale and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs).

Furthermore, African countries should come up with a cluster-development programme that targets SMEs to enable them to obtain easier access to markets and technology.

Clusters (geographic concentrations of interlinked firms, suppliers, service providers, and companies in related industries) provide and encourage collective efficiency and competitiveness, and foster productivity and innovation.  

Countries in the SADC region can also use trade fairs such as the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair as a unique opportunity to present some of their well researched and developed products to the wider African market.

They can also use trade fair platforms to showcase only technologies, processes, designs and products entirely conceptualised, designed and produced in Africa by Africans.

The education sector is of paramount importance in transforming the continent’s manufacturing sectors.

This means political leaders in Africa need to intervene to enhance special training that is relevant and that contributes to industrial development. This can be done through increasing role of the private sector in skills development, as is the case in the mining and hospitality sectors.

To use manufacturing as a panacea for Africa’s industralisation, the continent should look inwards and ensure that adequate funds are made available for the development of the manufacturing sector. This means African governments should patronise products as this is the only way to encourage and promote the inventions by Africans for Africa.

More so, African states should collaborate with countries like China in terms of technology and innovation to improve their manufacturing industries.

Importantly, commercial, merchant and development banks in African countries should chip in and support governments’ effort to promote inventions of science agencies. They can also coordinate and promote various research works in African universities and research institutions to improve manufacturing and use it as a step towards Africa’s industrialisation.

The full recovery of the manufacturing sector in countries within and across African countries requires holistic recovery of all sectors of production such as the agriculture sector.

This must be coupled with African governments’ deliberate interventions that should be pro-poor, inclusive, and highly selective and at the same time conditioned to attain socio-economic efficiency and competitiveness, without compromising environmental sustainability.