Ethiopia's China-inspired Agro Processing Strategy

The ChinAfrica Project posted on 13 March 2020 an article titled "Ethiopia's China-inspired Agro-processing Strategy" by Pippa Morgan, New York University Shanghai.

Ethiopia has designated agro-processing as one of ten strategic sectors. It is promoting the construction of agro-industrial parks in an effort to ensure that more of Ethiopia's agricultural exports are processed domestically into secondary products rather than exported in raw forms. It is too early to determine whether Ethiopia's China-inspired strategy will meet expectations.

Agriculture Powering Africa's Economic Transformation

The Accra-based African Center for Economic Transformation (ACET) posted on 10 October 2017 a massive study titled "Africa Transformation Report 2017: Agriculture Powering Africa's Economic Transformation." The lead author was Yaw Ansu, chief economist at ACET. You can download the entire report or an overview in English and French.

The premise of the study is that Africa is blessed with many natural advantages and rising market opportunities that could be leveraged for agricultural transformation. It also grapples with the current focus in Africa on industrialization by arguing that African countries have the opportunity to pursue two tracks to industrialization--one that leverages their relative labor-abundance for labor-intensive and export-oriented light manufacturing, and another track that leverages their advantages in agriculture for globally competitive manufacturing based on agriculture.