UNECA: Launch of the Economic Report on Africa in Rabat, Morroco
To ensure that growth is both sustainable and beneficial to all strata of society in Africa, countries on the continent, including North Africa, must adopt industrial policies that are germane to their own local contexts and set up strong institutions with the mandate of formulating and pushing through such policies. These are the major recommendations of the Economic Report on Africa 2014 launched at the University Mohamed V, in Rabat, Morocco on 21 November 2014.
The Report incorporates several country case studies across Africa, including that of Tunisia, partly relating the continent's failure to transform itself industrially to inadequacies in industrial policy design. These deficiencies, the report says, results from the erroneous pursuit of a one-size fits all approach to industrialization learnt from elsewhere, the lack of policy dynamism, gaps in high level coordination and the acute lack of consultations with all stakeholders especially those of the private sector.
This year's Report focuses on "Dynamic Industrial Policy in Africa: Innovative Institutions, Effective Processes and Flexible Mechanisms." The theme is a logical extension of the reflections started in recent editions of the report notably that of 2011 on the role of the state in economic transformation and that of 2013 on basing industrialization on Africa's vast raw materials.
Beyond dissecting the difficulties on industrializing in Africa, the Report catalogues the experience of other countries of the South that have made huge progress in industrializing and suggests an institutional framework to conceive and implement industrial policies on the continent. It urges African governments, in a context of limited resources, to build tailor-made infrastructure that would respond to the needs of specific sectors or domains for industrial expansion.
These issues come under the scrutiny of economists, social sciences experts coming from North Africa and the Mediterranean Region and other officials of the WTO Chair and the University Mohammed V. The launch was in the context of the Mediterranean Colloquium, a joint ECA, ATPC, WTO and LEAD University (Toulon, France) initiative, which gather each year high level experts from both side of the Mediterranean region.
The presentation by ECA was discussed by Professor Youcef Ben Abdallah, from the University of Algier. He gave to ECA his global appreciation to the report and emphasized the relevance of ECA's analysis in boosting industrialization in Africa. He further supported the idea of going beyond the formal coordination advocated by the report by adding an informal coordination of industrial policy which could support the official policy and add to its flexibility.
Experts agreed on the analysis made by Pr Ben Abdallah and further recommended to ECA to encourage member States to keep the momentum of "industrialization in support to structural transformation" by analyzing in next report the specific role of each actor and other stakeholders in making successful industrialization policies in Africa.