Problems of Industrialization in Africa

Abstract

The newly independent nations of Africa have, without exception, proclaimed their desire to industrialize in order to create increasingly productive employment opportunities and higher living standards for all their inhabitants. Historically, colonial development was oriented to producing the raw material exports required by the factories of Europe, and importing the manufactured goods those factories produced. Colonial government expenditures were devoted to building the infrastructure—railroads, roads, ports—required to facilitate the export of raw materials. Colonial policies discouraged local manufacturing to preserve African markets for goods produced in European factories. Most of the investable surpluses created by raw materials production in Africa were siphoned out of the country in the form of profits, interest, and dividends of the oligopolistic colonial firms that owned the mines and estates, and dominated the foreign trade. Little capital was left for investment in new industries. At the time of independence, less than 10% of the national product in the typical African country consisted of manufactured output—among the lowest level of industrialization in the world.