{"id":1588,"date":"2016-06-16T12:05:34","date_gmt":"2016-06-16T11:05:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/?p=1588"},"modified":"2016-10-26T15:39:28","modified_gmt":"2016-10-26T14:39:28","slug":"manufacturing-in-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/2016\/06\/16\/manufacturing-in-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Manufacturing in Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lagos is full of street vendors (see an earlier post<\/a> about their frenzy activity!). It can get overwhelming! One of my Nigerian friends explained to me \u201cYeah! We\u2019re traders! There\u2019s hardly any manufacturing<\/strong>, and there are historical reasons for this: the Brits were interested in selling overseas what they manufactured at home<\/strong>\u2026\u201d This seems to be an important reason for the lack of early investment in manufacturing industries<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Has the picture changed in recent times? Not much. KPMG released recently a sector report on Manufacturing in Africa<\/a>: manufacturing in Africa accounts for 1.5 % that of the world. Compare this to Africa\u2019s 15.4 % share of the world population <\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Manufactures-in-Africa\"<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s take a look at some countries, and their share of Africa\u2019s totals. Data refers to 2013 (as in KPGM\u2019s report). At the top of the table are countries whose share of manufacturing is higher than that of population, and at the bottom the others:<\/p>\n

\"Manufacturing<\/p>\n

A country like Nigeria \u2013 the most populous one in the continent \u2013 represents 2.4 % of the world\u2019s population and only 0.35 % of the manufacturing output<\/strong>. My usual caveat here: these statistics do not account for manufacturing activities in the informal sector<\/a><\/strong>. Some estimations indicate it may represent 30-60% of GNP in some African countries<\/strong>. Still, visual observation indicates that there\u2019s more trade than manufacturing \u2013 I Nigeria and in most other countries in Africa.<\/p>\n

There are many readings to this picture. They range from pessimistic views (\u201cthere\u2019s no way to have \u201cnormal\u201d operations there\u2026\u201d) to optimistic ones (\u201cthe continent is ripe for new investments”). If you\u2019ve been following this blog, you know that I lean towards the optimistic side<\/strong>. This is not to say that I oversee difficulties: they are there (from insufficient infrastructures to corruption to\u2026). But so are the opportunities for those willing to take the risk<\/strong>, aren’t they?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lagos is full of street vendors (see an earlier post about their frenzy activity!). It can get overwhelming! One of my Nigerian friends explained to me \u201cYeah! We\u2019re traders! There\u2019s hardly any manufacturing, and there are historical reasons for this: the Brits were interested in selling overseas what they manufactured at home\u2026\u201d This seems to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1654,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99579,492],"tags":[79906,955,93300,1011,1080,79905],"class_list":["post-1588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-african-economic-and-institutional-context","category-development","tag-informal-economy","tag-kpmg","tag-lagos","tag-manufacturing","tag-nigeria","tag-street-vendors","megacategoria-mc-africa"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1654"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1588"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1595,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1588\/revisions\/1595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}