This book highlights the key issues, opportunities and challenges facing African firms, industries, cities and nations in their quest to compete successfully in the global economy. Exploring a topic which has grown in importance as Africa faces a period of subdued economic development, this edited collection takes a unique multi-disciplinary, multi-industry and multi-country approach. The authors provide insights into a broad range of issues, including competitiveness measurement and evaluation, sectoral competitiveness of declining and emerging industries, threats of the ‘Dutch Disease,’ and talent competitiveness. This timely book offers a response to the urgent need for the diversification of economies and the advancement of manufacturing in Africa, appealing to scholars of international business and economics.

Research Paper (undergraduate) from the year 2006 in the subject Economics - Case Scenarios, grade: 1,5, University of Cooperative Education Mannheim, course: International Seminar, language: English, abstract: This term paper on hand analyses the competitiveness of five African nations. Depending on the data from the WEF, five African nations have been chosen. These are in detail South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Mauritius and Egypt. The main goal of this paper was to analyze these countries in their competitiveness and benchmark them as an example for other African nations. Therefore this paper first gives an overview on the current political situation, the geographical conditions and the historic background to each country. Each country then is analyzed in the primary, secondary and tertiary sector and gives details on the main economical challenges of each country. The benchmarking deals with the performance in different categories which are Government Efficiency, Business Efficiency, Economic Performance and Infrastructure. The paper on hand comes to the conclusion that the selected five countries are indeed very competitive countries within the African continent. They all have dealt with problematic fields of their economy in the past in their individual way and thus improved their performance. The majority of these five countries still have to work harder on these problematic areas to reach a worldwide competitive level, some of them have already reached this level to some extent. The necessary background information and statistics have been taken from the World Economic Forum (WEF) and various reliable internet resources. The paper on hand analyses the data within the past 16 years or more, depending on the question analysed.

Does greater product market competition improve external competitiveness and growth? This paper examines this question by using country-and firm-level data for a sample of 39 sub-Saharan African countries over 2000–17, as well as other emerging market economies and developing countries, and finds that an improvement in domestic competition is associated with a signficant increase in real GDP per capita growth rate, achieved mainly through an improvement in export competitiveness and productivity growth. Price levels, including of essential items, are also generally lowered with an increase in competition. Moreover, at the firm-level, evidence shows that greater competition—proxied through a decline in corporate market power—is associated with an increase in firm’s investment and the labor’s share in output. These effects are more pronounced in the manufacturing sector and among domestic firms compared to foreign firms.

This book offers insight into international trade and foreign direct investment competitiveness in Africa. It examines two policies frequently used to enhance international competitiveness in Sub-Saharan African economies: exchange rate policy and productivity-related policy.

Research Paper (undergraduate) from the year 2006 in the subject Economics - Case Scenarios, grade: 1,5, University of Cooperative Education Mannheim, course: International Seminar, language: English, abstract: This term paper on hand analyses the competitiveness of five African nations. Depending on the data from the WEF, five African nations have been chosen. These are in detail South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Mauritius and Egypt. The main goal of this paper was to analyze these countries in their competitiveness and benchmark them as an example for other African nations. Therefore this paper first gives an overview on the current political situation, the geographical conditions and the historic background to each country. Each country then is analyzed in the primary, secondary and tertiary sector and gives details on the main economical challenges of each country. The benchmarking deals with the performance in different categories which are Government Efficiency, Business Efficiency, Economic Performance and Infrastructure. The paper on hand comes to the conclusion that the selected five countries are indeed very competitive countries within the African continent. They all have dealt with problematic fields of their economy in the past in their individual way and thus improved their performance. The majority of these five countries still have to work harder on these problematic areas to reach a worldwide competitive level, some of them have already reached this level to some extent. The necessary background information and statistics have been taken from the World Economic Forum (WEF) and various reliable internet resources. The paper on hand analyses the data within the past 16 years or more, depending on the question analysed.