Made in Africa: Industrial Policy in Ethiopia
Insider account of the cement, floriculture and leather sectors by the official who ran the policy.
Summary
Arkebe Oqubay held senior positions in the Ethiopian government, including as mayor of Addis Ababa and as an adviser to the prime minister, and wrote this doctoral study of Ethiopian industrial policy from inside the state that made it. He examines three sectors in detail: cement, floriculture and leather.
The comparison is the point. Ethiopian floriculture succeeded, growing from nothing to a substantial export industry, because policy combined land allocation, air freight capacity through Ethiopian Airlines, credit and technical support with a demanding export discipline. Cement succeeded partly, with capacity built to meet domestic construction demand. Leather did not succeed, despite Ethiopia having the livestock and despite comparable government attention, because the policy did not address the upstream quality problems in hides and skins and because the export restriction on semi-processed leather did not produce the intended upgrading.
Oqubay's analytical claim is that policy independence matters: the state must be able to withdraw support from failing firms and to resist the interests it has created. He is explicit that his access as a participant gives him information no outside researcher could obtain and creates an obvious bias. The book was published in 2015, and Ethiopia's subsequent macroeconomic difficulties, the conflict from 2020, and the debt restructuring bear heavily on any assessment of the model. The sectoral case studies remain valuable regardless of what happened after.
Key takeaways 7
- Ethiopian floriculture succeeded because policy addressed land, air freight, credit and technical training together rather than any one alone.
- Export discipline, meaning the withdrawal of support from firms that fail to export, distinguishes industrial policy that works from subsidy.
- Leather policy failed because export restrictions on semi-processed product did not fix the upstream quality problems in hides.
- Access to air freight capacity determined the viability of a perishable export industry, which made a state-owned airline a policy instrument.
- Oqubay argues that policy independence, meaning the state's capacity to resist the interests its own policies create, is the binding constraint.
- Sectoral outcomes within the same country under the same government varied widely, which shows that state capacity alone does not explain success.
- Learning by policymakers, including copying and adapting instruments from East Asia, was as important as learning by firms.
Who should read it
Investors and analysts assessing African industrial policy who want sector-level evidence on which interventions produced exports and which produced nothing.
Where it sits in the reference 2
Similar books 6
Chosen by shared topics, the entries that hold them, and the people who recommended both.
