Taking South Africa as an important case study of the challenges of structural transformation, the book offers a new micro-meso level framework and evidence linking country-specific and global dynamics of change, with a focus on the current challenges and opportunities faced by middle-income countries.

The revival of economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa is all the more welcome for having followed one of the worst economic disasters—a quarter century of economic malaise for most of the region—since the industrial revolution. Six of the world's fastest-growing economies in the first decade of this century were African. Yet only in Ethiopia and Rwanda was growth not based on resources and the rising price of oil. Deindustrialization has yet to be reversed, and progress toward creating a modern economy remains limited. This book explores the vital role that active government policies can play in transforming African economies. Such policies pertain not just to industry. They traverse all economic sectors, including finance, information technology, and agriculture. These packages of learning, industrial, and technology (LIT) policies aim to bring vigorous and lasting growth to the region. This collection features case studies of LIT policies in action in many parts of the world, examining their risks and rewards and what they mean for Sub-Saharan Africa.

A brief overview of the African economic picture reveals a paradox where the continent that has rich mineral resources, nearly a billion people and a land mass which includes the sizes of China, USA, India, Western Europe, Argentina together larger than the sum of these regions is in an unacceptable state of being an object of aid, debt and loans despite the vast resources both known and yet to be explored. Africa should have been a productive and innovation centre and not a charity and aid centre of the world where 'donorship' has replaced African national ownership' of not just Africa's resources, but even worse, Africa's own agency, autonomy and independence to shape policy and direction; to undertake African integrated national development by establishing a science, engineering and technology based knowledge, innovative, learning and competent economy. The chapters in this volume address the application of the innovation approach to a variety of problems in Africa. Together they highlight the critical importance of the innovation systems approach in each of the issues the authors preferred to select and analyse. In the African context, the application of innovation goes beyond firms to the informal activities at grassroots level. The boundaries and the range of actors and activities for innovation application are varied and not limited. This variation is represented in this volume by the diverse issues that the authors dealt with in their research by applying as common the use and application of innovation.

Sustainable Industrialization in Africa explores the issues that confront development policy in the context of the MDGs and the post-2015 development agenda from an African perspective. The book argues that development is an ultimate outcome of sustainable, equitable industrialization, and that any development agenda for the future has to ensure that industrialization is fostered in a way that makes economies independent and responsive to the needs of all citizens. Future challenges for sustainable industrialization in Africa, based upon the differences in its current industrialization trajectories, are discussed to ensure that industrial growth results in positive economic and social outcomes in the context of the post-2015 development agenda.

Africa’s Development Dynamics uses lessons learned in the continent’s five regions – Central, East, North, Southern and West Africa – to develop policy recommendations and share good practices. Drawing on the most recent statistics, this analysis of development dynamics attempts to help African leaders reach the targets of the African Union’s Agenda 2063 at all levels: continental, regional, national and local.

It has been long overdue to address the principal problems that Africa continues to have. How to bring real African solutions to these problems remains unresolved. Palaeontologists have discovered that Africa is the origin of humanity. Africa has also experienced the commodification of its humanity through slavery, colonialism and apartheid. The African continent has been influenced by a melange of races, cultures, religions, ethnic nationalities making the project of how the differences can be managed to forestall conflict and promote the unity of the current 54 states to turn the cacophony of noises into a single voice that can protect Africa a di? cult challenge. This book on Regenerating Africa: Bringing African Solutions to African Problems addresses why Africans must come together and try to address their own problems. They must look back to the spiritual, struggle and knowledge heritage to re-imagine and innovate a new Africa with leadership, governance, systems and institutions that can address the security and well-being, the employment, social inclusion, poverty eradication and the equality of the people. In fact the key problem to find a solution is how to Africanise those that originated from Africa and those that became settlers with different racial, cultural, religious, linguistic and ethnic variations. How to manage inter-African relations? How the settlers from the colonial legacy, the apartheid legacy, the Arabs in Africa and the varied tribes within Africans can all share being Africanised above all else is a real challenge to bring lasting solutions to Africa's enduring problems. This book is one of the few books that addresses the real problems Africa continues to face by suggesting solutions which policy makers and all Africans must learn and never ignore but use to advance a free, united, renascent, proud and dignified independent Africa in this unpredictable time the world is going through. The contributors address in the book how African solutions to African problems in the current global context to create a sustainable African future can be thought, designed and engineered to advance the well-being of people and nature for all. The African Unity for Renaissance series of conferences that over 10 partners contributed to run is the true source for generating the quality papers that have been peer reviewed to constitute the contributions in the book to make African solutions to African problems in reality and not just in talk.

Publisher description