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Industrialisation and the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Extract

There has been a marked change in recent years in the climate of ideas about industrialisation in developing economies and it is fortunately no longer necessary to argue in favour of industrialisation in opposition to another approach to economic development. Yet it is still necessary to continue to state the basic case, particularly since Africa is industrially the least developed of all the continents. The doctrine that industry is the key to economic development is of comparatively recent origin. Its antecedents are the writings of Professor G. Myrdal and Dr R. Prebisch and the practical achievements of the U.S.S.R. and Japan.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1964

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References

Page 351 note 1 The Economic Development of Latin America and its Principal Problems (New York, United Nations, 1950).Google Scholar

Page 351 note 2 Towards a New Trade Policy for Development: Report by the Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (New York, United Nations, 1964),Google Scholar

Page 352 note 1 Myrdal, G., Economic Theory and Under-developed Regions (London, 1957), p. 52.Google Scholar See also p. 13 on the tendency away from automatic self-stabilisation.

Page 352 note 2 See, for example, Baer, W., ‘The Economics of Prebisch and E.C.L.A.,’ in Economic Development and Cultural Change (Chicago), X, 2, 01 1962.Google Scholar

Page 352 note 3 Seers, D., ‘The Role of Industry in Development: some fallacies,’ in The Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge), I, 4, 12 1963.Google Scholar Mr Seers is also clearly right to draw attention to other fallacies of a different kind, e.g. that there is no case for industrialisation at the expense of agricultural development, but that on the contrary industrial and agricultural development must go hand in hand, and that industry is not normally in the short run a significant employment creator.

Page 353 note 1 A provisional version of this study was prepared in 1962 for the first meeting of the E.C.A. Standing Committee on Industry and Natural Resources. It was subsequently revised and published by the U.N. as Industrial Growth in Africa (New York, 1963).Google Scholar

Page 353 note 2 Ibid. ch. iv.

Page 353 note 3 E.C.A. classifies Africa as a ‘region’, and the Maghreb, West Africa, and East and Central Africa, as ‘sub-regions’.

Page 353 note 4 See ‘Report of the West African Industrial Co-ordination Mission’ (E/CN. 14/246), Addis Ababa, January 1964; ‘Report of the E.C.A. Industrial Co-ordination Mission to East and Central Africa’ (E/CN. 54/247), Addis Ababa, December 1963; and ‘Report of the E.C.A. Industrial Co-ordination Mission to Algeria, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia’ (E/CN.14/248), Addis Ababa, February 1964. These missions were directed and largely manned by E.C.A. staff members, with participants from the United Nations Industrial Development Centre, the Food and Agriculture Organisation, and the I.L.O.

Page 354 note 1 Industrial Growth in Africa, para. 3.

Page 355 note 1 Industrial Growth in Africa, para. 60.

Page 356 note 1 See E/CN.14/248, para. 7.

Page 357 note 1 See ‘Development of the Iron and Steel Industry in Africa’ (E/CN. 14/INR/27), Addis Ababa, November 1963.

Page 357 note 2 See E/CN.14/248.

Page 358 note 1 See reports of the three E.C.A. Industrial Co-ordination Missions, op. cit. It should be made clear at this point that none of the Missions visited Central Equatorial Africa and North East Africa. Obviously the picture will be significantly changed if Congo (Leopoldyule) and the United Arab Republic are brought in.

Page 358 note 2 The report of the E.C.A. Industrial Co-ordination Mission to Algeria, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia pointed out that a large part of the investment already committed would be wasted, and the very substantial investment still to be undertaken perhaps not be forthcoming, without an agreement between the four countries.

Page 359 note 1 ‘Iron and Steel in West Africa’ (E/CN.14/IS/2), Addis Ababa, September 1963. 25

Page 360 note 1 Singer, H. W., ‘The Distribution of Gains between Investing and Borrowing Countries,’ in the American Economic Review (Evanston), 05 1950, pp. 473–85.Google Scholar

Page 361 note 1 ‘The Building Materials Industry in Africa: Part II’ (HOU/WP.4/Add. I), Addis Ababa, May 1961.

Page 362 note 1 E/CN.14/246, p. 56.

Page 362 note 2 The arguments suggested are essentially along the lines defined by Ilett, J., ‘Designated Product Common Markets,’ in East African Economics Review (Nairobi), IX, 2, 12 1962.Google Scholar

Page 362 note 3 Zambia insists rightly on protecting a wide range of industries against Southern Rhodesian exports while keeping open her market for certain large-scale industries there on a reciprocal basis. But the arrangements required are necessarily differential in character.