Making Africa Work
Operator-facing handbook on governance and growth constraints across the continent.
Summary
Greg Mills, Olusegun Obasanjo, Jeffrey Herbst and Dickie Davis wrote this as a handbook addressed to African governments rather than as an academic study. Obasanjo's participation as a former Nigerian president gives it a practitioner's authority that similar books lack.
The organising fact is demographic. Africa's population is projected to roughly double by 2050 and to urbanise rapidly, which means the continent must create employment on a scale no region has managed outside East Asia. The authors argue that current growth, driven by commodity prices and by consumption, does not generate the jobs required, and that the necessary response is manufacturing and commercial agriculture at scale.
The chapters treat specific obstacles: agricultural productivity and land tenure, infrastructure and the cost of power, urbanisation without industrialisation, the informal sector, the security and governance conditions for investment, and the management of natural resources. The recommendations are practical and repetitive by design, since the authors are attempting to produce a checklist. The book is optimistic about what policy can achieve and gives limited weight to the political interests that block each recommendation, which is a general weakness of the reformist literature. Readers should note that Mills runs a foundation funded partly by business interests with African exposure.
Key takeaways 7
- Africa's demographic expansion requires employment creation at a scale that commodity-driven growth cannot supply.
- Urbanisation in Africa is occurring without industrialisation, which produces cities of informal service work rather than rising productivity.
- The cost and unreliability of electricity is the single most-cited constraint by African manufacturers, and it is a policy failure rather than a resource one.
- Agricultural productivity gains would free labour and raise rural incomes simultaneously, and land tenure insecurity is the main obstacle.
- Resource revenues have consistently weakened the institutions needed to convert them into growth.
- The authors argue that African governments, not donors or foreign investors, control the decisions that matter most.
- Regional integration matters more for small African economies than access to distant markets, because neighbours are the realistic first customers.
Who should read it
Investors and executives assessing African markets who want a practical agenda framed by people who have governed and advised there.
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