Trait-making for labour-intensive technology in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

Empirical evidence indicates that the use of labour-intensive techniques in African industry would create not only more employment but also more value-added, relative to competing capital-intensive alternatives. The evidence also indicates, however, that it is the latter rather than the former techniques which tend to dominate much of the industrial sector in Sub-Sahara. We argue here that this apparently paradoxical situation can be understood once one takes into account the amount of institutional change (or institutional trait-making) that would need to accompany the introduction of labour-intensive techniques on a large scale. Using a number of concepts advanced by Hirschman and drawing mainly on cases from the road construction industry in Africa, we describe exactly which traits need to be made and how this can best be accomplished.