32 Industrialization in Sub-Saharan Africa
the argument could be made that the early failures may not necessarily define its future prospects for industrialization. Lack of industries is a defining characteristic of many developing economies at low levels of income. Hence, the industrialization peaks identified in Rodrik (2016) for a few countries may be false starts or unsuccessful attempts at industrialization caused by well-known factors, including political economy constraints, poor investment climate, low productivity, and lack of effective industrial policies and partnerships between governments and the private sector. Thus, to the extent that a strong industrial base has not yet been developed in the region, any suggestion of premature deindustrialization is misleading. The case remains, however, that Sub-Saharan Africa is the least industrialized region in the world. Only a few countries, including Mauritius and South Africa, have successfully developed strong industrial economies. Failure has often characterized the efforts of developing economies before their successful industrialization. Still, the predominant pessimism about industrialization prospects in the region highlights important challenges that Sub-Saharan African countries face in their industrialization efforts, including technical progress in manufacturing that is making it increasingly labor saving, which limits the traditional mass job creation prospects associated with industrialization. It is therefore important to distinguish between early failures in industrialization efforts and premature deindustrialization, given that the policy implications of this distinction are especially important for the prospects for industrialization in the region. In summary, countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have had different experiences in industrializing their economies, and clear evidence of premature deindustrialization in the region as a whole is lacking. Yet many countries have not undergone the kind of successful structural transformations associated with sustained economic growth and job creation on a large enough scale to have an impact on poverty reduction. Emerging trends in international trade policies; changes in global production processes, mainly caused by the emergence of global value chains; and unprecedentedly rapid technological advances biased toward labor-saving technologies present significant challenges for the region in its efforts to follow traditional models of structural transformation through industrialization. However, much of the pessimism about the prospects for industrialization in Africa is overstated because the debate has been dominated by the consideration of past failures as signals of poor prospects for the future.
The Future of Industrialization in Africa Given the uncertainty that has emerged about the path of industrialization that countries should follow, there is no guarantee that all countries in the
