Blogs and Op-ed

Pan African Visions, July 2026

South Africa’s electricity crisis has caused more than temporary output losses; it has created persistent “productive scars” by weakening investment, employment, supplier networks, export capacity and technological learning. These losses complicate the green transition because restoring electricity reliability alone cannot rebuild eroded industrial capabilities. The central risk is a transition that expands renewable energy and clean-energy projects without generating domestic manufacturing, technological upgrading or deeper value-chain participation. Addressing this challenge requires that energy reform become a strategy of productive reconstruction, aligning electricity investment, industrial policy and transition finance to rebuild firms, skills, suppliers and competitiveness alongside decarbonisation over time.

OPEC Fund Quarterly, May 2026

Finance, not just the volume but also the structure, is not neutral to green industrialisation. Its structure particularly shapes whether green investments generate lasting productive capabilities or remain isolated projects. Yet discussion about financing Africa's green industrialisation ends often on a farmiliar phrase: Africa needs more capital. Africa’s green industrial transformation requires more than mobilising volumes of finance. It requires financing architectures aligned with the realities of industrial development. Three forms of alignment are particularly important, including temporal alignment with long investment and learning horizons, currency alignment to reduce exchange-rate and financial fragility, and structural alignment with domestic firms, skills and industrial ecosystems. The central challenge is therefore not simply financing access, but designing finance capable of supporting sustained structural transformation.

Growth Research Platform. March, 2026

Global value chains (GVCs) can create jobs, but their employment effects are far from uniform. Using administrative data covering South Africa’s formal manufacturing firms from 2009–2017, the study finds that GVC participation generates substantial job reallocation: job creation exceeds job destruction overall, producing net employment gains. Crucially, these gains are concentrated among younger, smaller firms and firms newly entering GVCs. By contrast, firms continuously integrated into GVCs experience net job losses, while exit is associated with job destruction. The policy lesson is clear: deeper GVC integration alone is insufficient; complementary trade, labour-market and firm-support policies are essential to broaden employment benefits.

Governance and Development Advisory.  February, 2026

Africa’s exclusion from the semiconductor global value chain is more than a technological gap; it is a structural development risk. As chips underpin digitalisation, green technologies, defence and advanced manufacturing, continued dependence on imports threatens Africa’s industrial resilience and technological sovereignty. Yet global supply-chain reconfiguration creates a strategic opening. Africa can leverage its mineral endowments, growing electronics market, expanding STEM capabilities and AfCFTA to enter feasible segments such as chip design, assembly, testing, packaging and power electronics. Success requires coordinated continental strategy, regional specialisation, national capability-building and development finance. The priority is not full fabrication, but intelligent, collective entry now.

Global Development Centre. July, 2024

Chinese investment is increasingly central to Africa’s industrialisation, but its climate implications depend on where and how that capital is deployed. Evidence from 34 African countries shows that Chinese FDI is associated with higher industrial carbon emissions, particularly when concentrated in labour- and resource-intensive sectors, while investment in knowledge-intensive manufacturing shows no significant emissions increase. The challenge is therefore not to discourage Chinese investment, but to reshape it. Stronger environmental regulation, incentives for high-tech and low-carbon industries, clean-technology transfer, and better monitoring can turn Chinese capital from a potential source of carbon lock-in into a catalyst for greener industrial transformation.

SARChI Industrial Development. March, 2024

Africa’s industrialisation requires technological capabilities that allow countries to absorb, adapt and create technology. Evidence across 50 African economies shows striking capability gaps, yet also reveals that these capabilities generate benefits beyond national borders. Improvements in one country can support industrialisation elsewhere, with intra-African trade acting as a key transmission channel. This makes technological development a regional, not merely national, policy challenge. Deepening AfCFTA, building regional value chains, expanding digital and physical infrastructure, and enabling cross-border learning can therefore turn uneven technological strengths into a collective foundation for Africa’s industrial transformation.