The 2015 edition of the Economic Report on Africa, "Industrializing through Trade", will be launched on the side of the Conference of African Ministers of Finance and Economic Development in Addis Ababa, on Tuesday 24 March 2015 from 16.00 hours in the United Nations Conference Centre, Conference Room 2.
The report builds on the key messages of the previous editions of ERA focusing on industrialization and structural transformation. Both ERA 2013 and ERA 2014 emphasized the role of trade in fostering industrialization, both at the regional and the global level, and underlined the importance of implementing trade policies in Africa, mainly aimed at overcoming market and institutional failures that hinder export competitiveness. This year's report further explores the question of how trade can serve as an instrument for accelerating industrialization and structural transformation in Africa.
Global value chains are an important feature in today's global economy. African countries show high participation rates, but are mostly confined to very low levels of value chains. While backward integration has been increasing in many African countries, the larger share of Africa's participation in value chains is mainly due to forward integration driven by exports of raw material. Intra-African trade in intermediates, which is significantly more diversified than the corresponding Africa's trade with the rest of the world, offers opportunities for the creation of regional production networks that could lead to value addition and increased industrialization. However, currently Africa sources 88 per cent of its imported inputs from the rest of the world.
The report puts emphasis on the importance of services to an economy as they are key inputs to most other businesses, and make a direct contribution to growth and job creation, attract FDI and are important for value addition along regional and global value chains. The report also focuses on the importance of strategic and sequenced use of trade policies for boosting intra-African trade and building up regional value chains to strengthen the capabilities and potential of African industries. The importance of complementary social policies for inclusive growth and structural transformation are also highlighted.
The launch will be attended by policy makers representatives of African Governments, civil society, private sector, think tanks, research institutions, regional and multilateral organizations and the media.
