Structural transformation in Africa’s economies remains the highest priority, and industrialization is the top strategy for achieving it in practice. Achieving the African Union’s Agenda 2063 and fulfilling the Sustainable Development Goals will demand a major re-design of growth strategies across the continent.
The big opportunity for Africa in 2016, as a latecomer to industrialization, is in adopting alternative economic pathways to industrialization.This requires governments to take on-board the drivers, challenges, and trade-offs in pushing for a greening of industrialization—and to build them into the vision and route-map for action. Seizing the momentum of the Paris Climate Agreement and the SDGs provides the ideal timing for such a shift in economic strategy.