31 go a long way toward creating new opportunities for employment and sustained growth in Africa.<sup>25</sup> Clearly, the potential opportunities for Africa‘s labor-intensive economies, which today are exporting mostly minerals are enormous.

The story for low-income countries elsewhere in the world is similar. In 2009, with a total population of 846 million and 13 percent of their GDP coming from manufacturing, their employment in the sector likely amounted to no more than 10 million. Thus, just as for African countries, China‘s industrial upgrading would provide them a golden opportunity for dynamic manufacturing-led growth. But for developing countries everywhere, the ability to benefit from the opportunities depends on their quickly formulating and implementing credible economic development strategies that are consistent with their comparative advantage and the flying-geese paradigm.

# **_A Road Map for Seizing the Moment: The Growth Identification and Facilitation Framework_**

The coming graduation of China and other middle-income growth poles from low-skilled manufacturing jobs is timely for low-income countries. But it is especially so for those in SubSaharan Africa. Despite the region‘s grim long-run performance and the potentially heavy economic and human cost of the recent global crisis, there is renewed optimism about its economic prospects: since the mid-1990s Africa has embarked on a new and higher growth trajectory. The main challenge facing African leaders is to avoid the policy mistakes of the past and instead implement the winning strategy.

Africa may be on the verge of an economic takeoff, recent empirical work suggests. Young (2010) sees an ―African growth miracle‖ in his analysis of such measures as real consumption, housing quality, and health and education. His results show that for the past two decades living standards in Sub-Saharan Africa have been rising by more than 3 percent a year—more than three times the rate indicated in international data sets. Using a new methodology to estimate income distribution, poverty rates, and inequality and welfare indexes for African countries in 1970–2006, Pinkovskiy and Sala-i-Martin (2010) conclude that African poverty is falling—and is falling rapidly. Moreover, they find that the growth spurt that began in 1995 appears to have reduced African income inequality rather than increased it. Radelet has identified 17 African countries that achieved annual per capita growth rates of 2 percent or more in 1996–2008 by putting behind them the conflict, stagnation, and dictatorships of the past and replacing them with steady economic growth, deepening democracy, improved governance, and decreased poverty (see Radelet 2010). Five fundamental changes are seen to be at work: more democratic and accountable governments, more sensible economic policies, the end of the debt crisis and

> 25 The creation of manufacturing jobs, especially through foreign direct investment, generally leads to the creation of jobs in other sectors through backward and forward linkages (see UNCTAD, _World Investment Report 2006_ ) and through multiplier effects as additional employment raises income levels. Backward linkages tend to be weaker in developing countries because it is often difficult to source local products. But forward linkages can have a substantial effect on employment. In Lesotho, for example, computable general equilibrium model simulations indicate that the employment of 56,000 workers in the garment sector, sustained by foreign direct investment flows, could have led to the creation of 77,000 additional nonmanufacturing jobs (see World Bank 2005b). In India it is estimated that creating 2.5 million jobs in the information technology sector could lead to 8.3 million additional jobs (NASSCOM 2011).