ABSTRACT

The ‘Africa rising’ narrative sparked a lively discussion of the powers of orthodox economic policies to ensure good economic governance and attract private investments to further stimulate economic growth. The 2014 commodity bust and the Covid-19 pandemic effectively ended this discussion and triggered a critical examination of the fundamentals of the narrative. This study investigates how orthodox economic policies have affected the strive for structural transformation in a resource-rich economy like Zambia. It argues that there is a mismatch between the mostly orthodox policies that have driven policy formulation and the needs of the domestic private sector. Therefore, it makes a case for setting domestic market formation as a guiding principle for future economic policies, specifically by focusing industrial policy on business climate, rather than investment climate, and by focusing on capacity building, upgrading, and growth in consumer and inter-sectoral demand, rather than only liberalisation and good economic governance.

摘要

“非洲崛起”的说法引发了一场关于正统经济政策在确保良好经济治理和吸引私人投资以进一步刺激经济增长方面的力量的热烈讨论。2014 年大宗商品泡沫破灭和 Covid-19 大流行有效地结束了这一讨论，并引发了对叙述基本面的批判性审查。本研究调查了正统的经济政策如何影响赞比亚这样资源丰富的经济体的结构转型努力。它认为，推动政策制定的大多数正统政策与国内私营部门的需求之间存在不匹配。因此，它将国内市场的形成作为未来经济政策的指导原则，特别是通过将产业政策重点放在商业环境上，