SMEs/SMIs centered industrialization for inclusive andsustainable growth in Africa – How can Japan help?
Elumba Jean Denis Nkongolo
GRIPS Development Forum (Senior Research Associate)

Abstract
Various industrialization strategies have been pursued to achieve economic
development in Africa without much success. Lack of ownership of a development
process rooted in African conditions is often cited as chief amongst multiple causes
for failure. This report, emphasizes that, because of the central role of Small andMedium Scale Enterprises (SMEs), and particularly
Small and Medium Scale
Industries (SMIs) in the private sector in Africa, and considering the shifting dynamic
in the world – globalization, emergence of new centers of power, global climatechange and a paradigm shift across the economy (green and bio-technologies) –there is a unique opportunity for a new SMEs/SMIs focused industrialization strategy
for Africa that Japanese SMEs can be incentivized to support to achieved inclusive
and sustainable economic growth on the continent.
Key words: Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), Small and Medium Industries(SMIs), Industrialization, Growth.

Introduction
African colonial economies evolved around an artificially created division of labour
where Africa traded in natural raw materials while “mother” countries exported
manufactured products to Africa. Very limited manufacturing took place in thecontinent while this artificially created division of labour existed.
Ever since independence in the 1960s, most African countries have sought to support
political independence by strengthening their economic autonomy. Various strategies
to achieve industrialization and economic modernization have been proposed andimplemented. From import substitution of the 1960s -1970s, to the current neoliberal export-oriented paradigm through structural adjustment programs of the
1980s – 1990s, all along the international donor community (mostly former
colonizers turned benefactors) supplied financial capital, and knowledge experts who
designed and continued to run – by proxy - the new economies. The takeoff that was
expected has never materialized. The dynamics involved in this transformation
perhaps constitute the very basis of the African problem: economic development
programmed and forced on Africa from the outside and therefore not part of a deep
philosophical concept of what the mass of the African people need.
Before being an economic problem, development is primarily a political one.
Therefore, we believe the models for Africa’s economic development so far proposedby the international donor community – to serve their economic and politico-strategicinterests - are bypassing the central issue of a balanced and equitable multilateralsystem1.
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Developed countries, donors and trading partners might also note the devastating impact of past policies,
investment approaches and inequitable trade regimes on the economies of African countries.

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A good strategy for Africa, to a large extent, must be based on agriculture andtailored to a people-centered model of development. It must also have catching-up
and forging-ahead policies built into the model.

Purpose of this report
This report is prepared to contribute an African perspective to the “Africa growth
initiative” brainstorming discussions conducted by the GRIPS Development Forum tofeed into the new development assistance program to effectively support economic
growth in Africa.
The discussions have centered, amongst other things, around the instruments Japan
can use to help revitalize the productive sector in Africa including (i) long-term policy
dialogue, (ii) joint drafting of industrialization strategy, (iii) infrastructuredevelopment, (iv) human capital development, etc.
Considering prevailing conditions in Africa, we argue in this report that in order togenerate inclusive and sustainable growth and integrate Africa into the world
economy, a SMEs/SMIs centered industrialization strategy would be best suited to
Africa.
Given the important role of SMEs and entrepreneurship for economic development on
the African continent, and based on the experiences of India and China – countries
that have resisted the neo-liberal Washington consensus ideology and integrated theglobal economy on their own terms – it is the purpose of this report to (i) underline
the centrality of SMEs/SMIs in the gradual industrialization of African economies, (ii)affirm the strategic importance of Africa to economic and political interests of Japan,and (iii) offer recommendations of what in our view are the instruments Japan can
use to support such an approach.
The report draws on information gathered from interviews with individuals working indevelopment-related fields. They include policy makers, African and Japanese
intellectuals, participants to the African growth initiative, African Ambassadors toJapan, and other opinion makers.

Literature review
History of industrialization in Africa
The importance of industrialization in a country’s economy does not need much
introduction. Classifying developing countries and developed countries is mainly
based on the extent of industrialization of a country. The industrial development of acountry starts from production and export of primary products, moves to the
production and export of technology-based capital and intermediate goods, before
finally producing hi-tech goods.
Having inherited, at independence in the 1960s and 1970s, a fragmented continent
with enclave economies (many small states) geared towards export of mainly
primary commodities, African governments recognized early on the need toindustrialize (to develop their manufacturing sector) and set up a common trade area
as key to economic development [Hopkins 1973].

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Most governments therefore embarked on a path to rapid industrialization andpursued the strategy billed as ‘catch-up industrialization’ for import substitution.
However, instead of designing strategies for catching up on the industrialized
nations’ route to development, they introduced state-of-the-art technologies toleapfrog at one bound the long and laborious path that had led to this level. Whenthe intended substitutes for imports were actually produced, they cost more than theequivalent imports due to fluctuations in the exchange rates, shortage in electricity
supply, rising costs of inputs due to high inflation, and small markets.
Naturally, this strategy failed, leaving massive white elephants and the resulting debt
burden that stifles economic growth in Africa till today. One reason often cited forthe failure is the fact that “the strategies pursued focused on setting up large capitalintensive concerns, in total disregard of the huge knowledge gap that existed – andstill exists – rather than promoting a gradual industrialization through the growth ofexisting small-scale and micro-enterprises” (W. S. Barthold, 2002). Moreover,
governments heavily relied on state-owned industries to implement their strategy.
As a result, private enterprises – majority of which are SMEs – rarely got incentives
from their governments.
In the 1980s and 1990s, structural adjustment programs (SAPs) were designed torestore internal and external macroeconomic stability. Although Africa emerged withmore open and “competitive” economies, and smaller governments, again, these
programs did not bring about the expected economic growth. Moreover, because
these programs blatantly ignored the social fabric and needs of the African society
for education, health and social cohesion, they contributed to further weakening of
already weak states (Mkandawire Thandika and Soludo, Charles, 1999).
From the 1990s onwards, globalization and export-oriented industrialization became
the new paradigm for economic development in Africa, where countries were literally
forced to open up to free trade. Growth expectations have not materialized in mostcases. In general, Africa’s level of industrialization has not change significantly. Thisis reflected in most country’s manufacturing contribution to GDP which show still
heavy dependence on the agriculture sector.
So many development strategies have been tried in Africa, none have delivered
sustained growth. If present conditions remain unaltered and the trend we see were
to continue, then being more enmeshed within the global economy would only meanthat by force of circumstances, Africa would be made to stay on the margins of the
global economy
Judging from the experience of early industrializers and the newly developed
countries, what worked is economic policies creating an environment sufficiently
attractive for investment and technology transfer to begin taking place. Once thegrowth process is initiated with sufficient vigour, expectations change in such a waythat favours the processes that support growth, such as investment in human capitaland institutional change.
Africa is experiencing record growth rates in many countries in a new era of relative
peace, political stability, improved governance and macroeconomic reform; Africa’s
fortunes seem to have changed for the better. The challenge is to ensure that thisgrowth - without much diversification – and attributed to high oil and commodity
prices (and windfall investments from China and India) is sustainable and trickle
down to reduce poverty. The fact that this has not happened calls into question the3continued relevance of many of the policies being followed. Increased revenues must
be used to address problems of skills shortages, enabling environment, infrastructuredevelopment, increased access to finance for entrepreneurs and improved health.
With the recent focus on economic growth, the international donors community has
been conducting “growth diagnostics” – the identification and removing of binding
constraints to economic growth. However, enough resources have been used fortheorizing, debates, and grand plans. What Africa needs is action; to take ideas andturn them into bricks and mortar.
New industrialization strategy and SMEs
Many economists and development professionals have called for a new direction for
the growth away form the Washington consensus that was followed in the 1980s(with devastating effect). A common thread that ran through the various reports andstudies was a call to enhance Africa’s industrialization and manufacturing capacity manufacturing generates value-adding activities based on the existing economic
resources of the country - to enable it to integrate and trade with the world. Africa
needs broad based industrialization that will restructure its enclave economies andreduce its vulnerability to the fluctuations of world commodity prices. Manufactured
products constitutes only 21 percent of total African exports worldwide. (Yutaka
Yoshino Policy Research Working Paper 4575)
In order to ensure that African industry could catch up on the development that
Europe and North America had once gone through, we should begin with whatalready exists and build up and expand the industrial sector from the ground up andinternally in pace with the development of the other sectors. A good start would beto identify sector(s) with the best potential to stimulate growth engine(s).
To realize the objective of economic growth through competitiveness on the one
hand and employment generation and income distribution on the other, SMEs
assume a critical role. Also, not only do SMEs dominate the African private sector,
the future is geared towards more flexible, modular and small-scale industries due totheir socio-economic and socio-ecological benefits. Therefore, a comprehensive
growth strategy tailored to substantially engage the SMEs would achieve the dual
objective of growth with equity and collective empowerment of the people to fully
participate in the design and management of long-lasting development paradigms.
Intra-Africa trade
Intra-African trade has tremendous potential that has yet to be fully exploited. For
Sub-Saharan Africa, regional integration is not just a matter of choice. It is a matterof survival in the jungle of international trade. Improved intra-African trade andbuilding regional complementarities should be a goal to enlarge the markets so thatsuccessful companies can attract more investors and expand their businesses.
Trade is important for Africa. Not only because the world economy has become more
integrated, but also because it is an important leverage for growth. At theinternational level African exports in world trade dropped due, among other reasons,to their concentration on a few primary agricultural and mineral products; to the lowlevel of integration in dynamic production and distribution networks; and because of
their weak industrial and technological bases.
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IMF trade data show that at the regional level, Africa’s trade within itself remains
poor compared to the internal trade of other regions such as Europe and Asia. WTO
2006 international trade statistics show that, intra-African trade as percent of totalexports was only 9.8% and 8.9% in 2000 and 2005 respectively. An average of
between 9% and 10% of intra-African trade is what has been consistently witnessed.
In contrast, the same data show that intra-Europe export trade, was 72.7% in 2001
and 73.2% in 2005, and has consistently been high. Among the 25 countries of theEuropean Union, the figures are 66.8% and 66.7% respectively. Further comparisonof Africa’s intra-export trade with South and Central America and Asia revealed that
Asia’s intra-trade as a percentage of the total exports of the region was 51.2% in
2005, while South and Central America’s was 24.3%. These comparative statistics
have clearly revealed the unenviable record of Africa in terms of its intra-regional
trade, and hence the need for the continent to do something to raise this low level oftrade compared to what is achieved in other regions. (It is often said that intraAfrican trade is perhaps greater than what the official trade data portrays because it
does not take into account trade in the informal sector, which is perceived to besignificant.)
Although Africans have always realized the importance of trading between
themselves, the capacity to implement such regimes is very low, and often than nothampered by other agreements. Nevertheless, we should acknowledge theseregimes are complex and take time to be effectively implemented.
The focus on intra-African trade raises the question as to whether one should
discount international trade in favor of intra-African trade; certainly not.
International trade has played an important role in African economies and willcontinue to do so.
To underline the link between SMEs driven industrialization and intra-Africa trade,data from the World Bank policy research working paper 4575 showed that whilesmall in absolute size, exports of manufactured products are a large share of intraAfrica export (43% of total intra-African trade), compared to exports to other regions.
Intra-Africa exports have also grown by almost 20% per annum on average from2001 to 2005, which is the highest growth for African manufacturing exports among
destinations. (Yutaka Yoshino: 2008)
However, various challenges continue to plague intra-African trade including among
others (i) structural deficiencies, (ii) economic development challenges, and (iii) halfhearted commitment to trade liberalization programs due to inherent difficulties and(iv) accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) or participation in Economic
Partnership Agreements. Take for example the transport sector, according to
UNCTAD, transport costs in Africa constitute over 15% of total cost of any productcompared with 8% for other developing countries and 5% for developed countries.

Importance of SMEs/SMIs focused industrialization
SMEs are important to almost all economies in the world, and particularly to Africawith her multitude of development challenges.
SMEs represent the biggest share in business establishments in practically all
countries and play a key role in the industrialization of a developing country. They5

have unique characteristics on their own, as they are extremely flexible and canreadily adapt to today’s rapidly changing environment.
Although the term “small and medium enterprise” has various definitions, suchdefinitions are basically based on volume of turnover and number of persons
employed in a particular firm. Variations are function of the level of economic
development of a country. For our purposes, SMEs and SMIs cover firms that employ
between 10 and 100 persons. (A typical Japanese SME is larger than its Africancounterpart given the larger scale of Japanese operations).
SMEs centered industrialization would be most suitable for Africa for the following
reasons: (Provided a good business environment exists)

1. SMEs enable better use of existing local capacity, thereby establishing the basis
for sustained long-run growth, and the opportunity to expand that capacity inthe future – we need to start with what we have;
2. They are naturally more labor intensive and central to job creation andcontribute to a more equitable distribution of income.
3. SMEs provide an increasing measure of national self-reliance - the future ofentrepreneurship in Africa should be in the hands of Africans themselves;
4. They are easier to start up as they require lower investment - SMEs are in thereach of Africa, and would enable them to take full ownership their development
and management;
5. Because of their large number in different sectors in Africa there is likelihood toadapt new technologies in response to competitive pressure in domestic andregional (or international) markets;
6. They play the role of invisible colleges that impart tacit knowledge through ‘On
the Job Training Units’ for various kind of labor force for the entire economy;
7. They focus on small markets – mostly domestic and regional markets (intraAfrica trade).
8. They are one of the push factors for foreign investors to invest in a particularcountry. The potential to be reliable suppliers is credited by foreign investors
who may wish to outsource their non-core activities to local suppliers.
9. They are also necessary for the structural change of a country’s economy, fromagriculture-dependent economy to an industrial and service-oriented economy.
10. They expand economic space and develop capacities in various industrial
sectors whose combined impact will have profound implications for long-term
economic transformation.
Within the new SMEs/SMIs focused industrialization ‘a la India’, the main economic
value in Africa of some of the required infrastructure, especially the social andcultural elements (e.g. human capacity development), does not lie in the directcontributions they make to GDP. Rather, the value is seen in the supporting role itprovides in building an environment conducive to entrepreneurship and innovation.
Instead of a mega project driven utilization of comparative advantage, which isessentially a short-term strategy, an SMEs focused industrialization strategy is much
more long-term as it would accelerate the economy’s shift of tomorrow’s
comparative advantage into higher value-added, higher return products and can help
in securing the economy’s place in higher potential industries.

6We can not go on playing the “catch up” game without a serious industrialization
policy as firms in the more productive economy can outcompete firms in the lessproductive one across many sectors. Given their potential to address both the growthand distributional concerns of economic policy, it is imperative that appropriate
attention is given to the promotion of SMEs in Africa.

Japan and Africa
Historically, Africa has generally been considered to fall outside the scope of Japan’s
concerns. However, in a changed international context, and an increasinglyinterdependent world, Africa has assumed new importance to Japan and Japan can
no longer afford to ignore Africa's challenges - from HIV/AIDS pandemic, extreme
poverty, environmental degradation to international terrorism - or disregard its
potential economic - Africa will continue to be an important source of strategic
minerals (significant reserves of rare metals in the world are know to be in Africa)and other natural resources, for some foreseeable future - and political relevance(~53 votes in the UN general assembly). In 1993, the Tokyo International
Conference for Africa’s Development (TICAD) process initiated by Japan firmly
moved African concerns from the margins of Japan foreign policy to the center.
In recent years, Japan and its trading houses have scrambled to court resource-rich
African countries as competition has intensified with the EU/USA and China/India tosecure natural resources.
Foreign direct investment from Japan to Africa is rising fast as many companies seek
access to increasingly precious resources. The amount of Japanese FDI to Africa in2007 reached $1.1 billion, up from $899 million in 2006 and $25 million in 2005,
according to the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO). We believe this positive
trend could substantially increase if Japanese SMEs potential is tapped forinvestment in Africa.

Africa at the cross roads
Although Africa is endowed with huge natural resources, it is recognized that many
natural resources are finite. Therefore, if properly managed, the wealth theygenerate should be invested in other forms of capital, particularly human, social andphysical to engender growth and multiplier effects on the continent. However, thishinges on ensuring Africa's ownership of the development process, strengthening
governance systems, reinforcing institutional capacity, investing natural resources
wealth in the creation of knowledge for economic innovation, negotiating better
terms with external partners, and integrating the natural resources sector into
national development frameworks.
For the first time, there are centers of power that understand Africa’s development
challenges. Because of their development experiences, China and India offer
valuable models for Africa as the continent seeks to achieve economic growth.
African governments should take advantage of this opportunity, which they have not
had for decades to determine the terms of engagement to diversify their economies
and make them more robust. Africa should use this new relationship to convert her
comparative advantage into competitiveness.

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The best approach for Africa
Anyone who designs a strategy that would be used to develop African economies
must ensure that it would generate an economy that includes the poor. The strategy,
to a large extent, must be based on agriculture and tailored to a people-centeredmodel of development. It must also have catching-up and forging-ahead policies
built into the model.
The issue as to how African countries can develop their manufacturing capabilities is
one of the most important policy issues facing governments in Africa. We believethat SMEs driven industrialization strategy would bring about a broad based growthwith re-distributive justice to reverse decades of economic decline andmarginalization. Therefore our recommendations that governments pursue SMEs
focused industrialization model that can
1. Achieve the extractive final stage processing. That is, value addition of natural
products before exports by extraction of main ingredients instead of exporting
raw materials;
2. Support and expand import substitution industries. This model would greatly help
the industrialization process by helping the emergence of light and heavy
industries in Africa. The idea being to manufacture most of the goods locally aswell as accelerate technology transfer.

How can Japan help?
Besides, (i) supporting infrastructure development, (ii) providing market access to
African products, (iii) supporting human capital development - vocational and tertiary
education with emphasis on science and technology – the following areas of support
would go a long way in making Japan’s assistance more effective:
Increasing the number and tenure of “Africa specialists”
It takes an incredibly long amount of time to know about a culture, generally 10 to
15 years. With the recent interest and increased involvement of Japan in Africa,
African studies could be stepped up in such a way that more research units are Africa
based.
Help reshape Africa’s image in Japan
The imaging and visioning of Africa in development literature has perpetuated myths
and half-truths about the continent that would make any rational entrepreneur think
twice. The reshaping of Africa’s image (in Japan) could be facilitated by mapping out
a detailed framework of political risk analysis for Africa to address the perception of
Africa as a “high risk investment destination” and differentiate the risk between
countries.
We may not go a long way restructuring the international economic order during thisera of globalization but we can provide a trans-cultural education on Africa that will
educate consumers, investors, and the general public and lead to a rethinking of its
people’s ideologies and socio-economic reality.

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Promote SMEs investment in Africa
To our knowledge, only a very small number of SMEs have ventured into Africa,
mainly into the tourism, trading in used vehicles and equipments and some agroprocessing. Interviews with a few SMEs have revealed that this trend is likely toincrease should there be a government policy to support such initiatives. Despite thislack of promotion, the importance of Japanese SMEs FDI should not be
underestimated.
Promote outward FDI (including technology transfer) to Africa through government
designed schemes to help to reduce the information gap in Japan surrounding an
investment in Africa and reduce the need for superficially high ex-ante, risk
unadjusted rates of return. For various reasons, there is a noted reluctance to rely
on African led investment promotion seminars.
Expanding outward promotion activities in Africa would be useful to collect up to datebusiness information. Currently, the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) only
has 4 offices in Africa covering (nominally) 53 countries.
A new fund to promote Japanese private sector investments in Africa is a new vehicle
that can incentivize the Japanese SMEs sector to consider Africa as an investment
destination. It is hoped the SMEs would have a greater share of this fund.
Collaboration in green- and Bio-technologies
Green technologies (Biotechnology) offer Africans the potential to leapfrog entire
stages of economic development and solve globally worrisome strategic problems
associated with the environment, population, food production, energy, poverty, andhealth care. At the moment, Africa commands little attention among worldtechnologists, leaving the field open to those who might wish to take a commanding
leadership role quickly and, perhaps, largely unchallenged.
In the age of global climate change, where new technologies, including biotechnology,
green chemistry and nanotechnology will drive greater eco-efficiency, resource
productivity and a paradigm shift across the economy, Japan could help Africa
strengthen it's capacity to harness renewable resources as a means to preserve thestock of non-renewable resources for future generations.
In the biotech industry particularly, it is not necessarily large firms that are poised totake market advantages and enlarge industrial inequalities. Countries such as India,
Cuba and China have demonstrated that small enterprises can acquire technologicaland market niches in modern biotechnology. Japan could help Africa harness
biotechnology in order to develop Africa’s rich biodiversity and improve agricultural
productivity and develop pharmaceutical products. There is also similar potential in
Agricultural Biotechnology, Forestry biotechnology, Health and medical biotechnology(diagnostic kit), Environmental biotechnology (using bacteria to treat contaminatedgroundwater), Environmental biotechnology.

Conclusion
The history of economic development is replete with cases in which governments
have tried unsuccessfully to promote the use of new technologies to accelerate
growth. This may be the case with efforts to transform Africa from a colonial
9economy (extractive economy) to a manufacturing economy. These efforts havebeen in most cases disappointing. The many reasons for failure include poor
governance, flawed policy design, and weak implementation. Nevertheless, African
policy makers have continued to look for innovative ways to increase economic
growth. The challenges they face are daunting, not least because global competition
is rising and taking new forms, driven by rapid technological change and the growthof global production networks in which sophisticated skills and capabilities are
required at the entry level. A lesson learned from past failures is that any
industrialization strategy must be evaluated against the fact that there exist
significant gap between national aspiration and actual capability. In this report wehave argued that a SMEs driven approach to economic growth will be the mostsuitable under current Africa circumstances. As manufacturing economy requires avery different set of supporting infrastructure from that of a colonial economy,
African governments together with their development partners, including Japan must
make the necessary changes to facilitate the transition – enabling environment fortechnology transfer and adaptation and innovation, physical infrastructure, humandevelopment to operate in the knowledge economy, etc.
There is need to go beyond acknowledging historical injustices to determining where
Africa's self interests lie and steer the world appropriately by establishing stronger
economic blocs within Africa and mutually beneficial partnerships outside Africa.
Africa has that responsibility and needs to determine an adequate framework forherself - a framework that is sensitive to international realities and opinions andwhich can get the buy-in from the rest of the World. This window of opportunity toredefine Africa’s role in the global community must not be wasted.

References
A.G. Hopkins; An economic history of west Africa, 1973
Wolfgang Schneider-Barthold: Africas Aborted Industrialisation Modernisation
Strategies Impede Organic Industrial Growth Development and Cooperation (No. 1,
January/february 2002, p. 15-17)
Mkandawire Thandika and Soludo, Charles (eds.)(1999), African Voices on Structural
Adjustment , Codesria & International Development Research Center.
Yutaka Yoshino Policy Research Working Paper 4575, 2008
N. Suzuki, SME development (Excerpt from the UNIDO paper for GOIC conference),
May 2001

The views expressed in this paper associated with the GDF project are those of theauthor. They are posted for discussion purposes only and do not represent the viewsof GRIPS.
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