Job Creation and Entrepreneurship: key engines to accelerate industrialization in Africa

Today, there is no doubt among leaders and stakeholders that industrialization will reinforce Africa’s role in the global economy and make a substantial contribution to the reduction of poverty. Industrial development raises productivity, creates employment, enhances the income-generating assets of the poor, and helps to diversify exports.

However, the consensus of opinion shows lack of industrialization and modest labor productivity growth particularly in Sub Saharan Africa (SSA), despite the fact that SSA has grown at unprecedented rates since the 1990s.

Industrialization should play central role in Africa's economic development and for the ILO, job creation and entrepreneurship could be the key drivers to accelerate that process.
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Apart from providing employment and income, African countries and populations could also benefit from the diversification of technological capabilities and an expanded skills base.

This course requires additional efforts to address the various challenges that submerge the continent’s prospects for industrialization: building stronger infrastructure, improving the environment for private sector development, providing more training for industrial skills and technological capabilities, strengthening support for institutions and instruments, increasing financing for industrial investments and forging closer regional integration and industrial complementarity.

“Industrialization is not luxury for the region but a necessity”, said recently the Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma.

According to the ILO, the thinking on growth strategies in Africa is well advised to consider the great potential and contribution that agriculture and services can make, but
industrialization continues to be essential, and the option of attracting investment for labor-intensive manufacturing should not be discarded.

Over the next decade there will be increasing opportunities for African countries to promote its industrialization, concludes ILO.