Africa Growth Initiative

Learning to Compete (L2C) is a comparative, country-based research project that seeks to answer a simple but perplexing question: why is there so little industry in Africa? Despite recent rapid growth, manufacturing is a smaller share of output and employment in Africa today than it was in the mid-1980s. The region’s share of world manufactured exports has fallen from 0.3 percent in 1980 to 0.2 percent in 2010.

The research project—led by Senior Fellow John Page, in collaboration with the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER) and the African Development Bank—utilizes both qualitative and quantitative research methods in nine African countries (Ghana, Uganda, Tanzania, Nigeria, Kenya, Senegal, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Mozambique, and Tunisia) and two south East Asian nations (Cambodia and Vietnam) to produce a cross-cutting analysis of the challenges to industrial development in Africa.

• May 27-28, 2011, Nairobi, Kenya
• February 22-23, 2012, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
• June 24-25, 2013, Helsinki, Finland