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Editorial Comment: Relationships, Learning and Economic Development in Africa
John Kuada4
Although micro and small enterprises (MSEs) are important vehicles for job creation in developing countries, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the nature and variety of the jobs created. Furthermore, the theoretical literature is largely silent on issues of labour and development. The paper begins from the premise that at its best, work enhances the quality life of workers. Using data from sixteen case studies of workers, this paper uses the ILO’s “decent work” framework to explore the variety of labour arrangements and working conditions present in the garment and metal manufacturing sub-sectors in Nairobi. The findings paint an overall picture of MSE employment as poorly paid and insecure, but also show fairly wide variations in almost all categories of security. The paper points to issues and approaches that should be addressed in future research and proposes a policy of encouraging clustering of enterprises as an immediate and fairly cost-effective way to improve MSE manufacturing jobs.
Most studies in inter-firm collaborations or alliances have either focused on understanding the conditions that facilitate them or on their outcomes. Few studies have focussed on how to make them successful. The current paper intends to contribute to bridging this knowledge gap by focusing on how to make donor-facilitated alliances successful. It presents a model of successful developed-developing country donor assisted collaborations and applied it to Danish funded Private Sector Development (PSD) projects in Ghana. The paper argues that the performance of such alliances can be greatly enhanced through such factors as appraisal of partners and projects, technology upgrading, resourcing and capability building.
Although Africa currently receives a limited amount of foreign investment flows compared to most other developing countries, the impact of these investments on economic growth can be greatly enhanced through the optimisation of the knowledge generated by the investors in the African economies. This paper presents a variety of modes of learning that can be used in transferring knowledge between developed country firms and their collaborative partners in Africa. It also highlights the characteristics of knowledge providers and knowledge receivers that would facilitate the transfer process. It has been observed that limited empirical investigations have been conducted in African countries to determine the manner in which the knowledge transfer process is currently organised. This paper calls for more research in the area and suggests five main propositions that can guide future research in the area.
This paper presents an integrated model of internationalisation of firms and illustrates its usefulness in analysing the economic growth opportunities available to African countries with the contemporary global market economy. It argues that African firms could strengthen their competitive positions in the global market, not only through downstream processes of internationalisation but also through links with their foreign suppliers. Upstream arrangements strengthen firms’ technological and organisational capabilities and enable them to raise their product and marketing effort to international standards. African government policy interventions must therefore address constraints in both upstream and downstream dimensions of internationalisation. The discussions also show that while intra-African trade remains constrained by internal problems, the new business relations between Asia and SSA countries (both upstream and downstream) offer new growth possibilities that African firms and governments must explore.
Key words: Africa, Internationalisation, Economic Growth, Exports, Upgrading
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