We investigate the scale, causes and timing of significant episodes of industrialization and deindustrialization in Sub-Saharan Africa. Recent studies have argued that the turning point of manufacturing output and employment shares tends to occur “prematurely” in this region (Rodrik, 2016). We perform our analysis using panel data methods for fractional responses and data from a variety of sources for a panel of 45 African countries. Our results overwhelmingly do not support the common finding that Sub-Saharan Africa countries have begun to deindustrialize prematurely. Moreover, we document meaningful heterogeneity across subregions of Sub-Saharan Africa with the Southern region being the only subregion that witnessed limited deindustrialization. However, this deindustrialization of the southern subregion does not appear to be occurring prematurely. The study also explores the potential role of Dutch disease and resource-curse hypotheses in understanding Sub-Saharan Africa’s manufacturing experience in resource rich countries. We conclude that manufacturing remains a viable and reliable path towards structural transformation in Sub-Saharan Africa.

中文翻译：

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非洲结构变革中的制造业

我们调查了撒哈拉以南非洲地区工业化和去工业化重大事件的规模、原因和时间。最近的研究认为，该地区制造业产出和就业份额的转折点往往“过早”出现（Rodrik，2016）。我们使用分数响应面板数据方法和来自 45 个非洲国家面板的各种来源的数据进行分析。我们的结果绝大多数不支持撒哈拉以南非洲国家已开始过早去工业化的普遍发现。此外，我们记录了撒哈拉以南非洲各次区域之间存在显着的异质性，南部地区是唯一经历有限去工业化的次区域。然而，南部次区域的这种去工业化似乎并没有过早发生。该研究还探讨了荷兰病和资源诅咒假说在了解撒哈拉以南非洲资源丰富国家的制造经验方面的潜在作用。我们的结论是，制造业仍然是撒哈拉以南非洲实现结构转型的一条可行且可靠的道路。