KAMPALA, May 22 (Xinhua) -- The African Development Bank (ADB) in its new outlook says the continent's entrepreneurs have the potential to accelerate the industrial transformation.
The Bank in its African Economic Outlook 2017 issued on Monday said African governments need to integrate entrepreneurship more fully into their industrialization strategies.
It argued that industrialization strategies need to support other sectors where African economies have comparative advantage, such as agri-businesses, tradable services and renewable energy.
According to the Outlook, 26 African countries have an industrialization strategy in place but most of the strategies tend to emphasize the role of large manufacturing companies at the expense of entrepreneurs in sectors with the potential for high growth and employment creation, including start-ups and small and medium-sized firms.
In 18 African countries for which statistics are available, 11 percent of the working-age population set up their own firms to tap specific business opportunities. This level is higher than in developing countries in Latin America (8 percent) and in Asia (5 percent), according to figures by the Bank.
To turn this dynamism into an engine of industrialization, African governments, according to ADB, can improve the skills of workers, enhance the efficiency of business clusters - such as industrial parks and special economic zones- and increase access to finance, with more affordable credit and more innovative instruments, for small and young firms.
"The key to successful development in Africa is to nurture the emerging culture of entrepreneurship," Abdoulaye Mar Dieye, Regional Director for Africa at the United Nations Development Program said.
Dieye noted that entrepreneurship is the other path for development that can unleash high-octane creativity and transform opportunities into phenomenal realizations.
The Outlook shows that businesses with fewer than 20 employees and less than five years' experience provide the bulk of jobs in Africa's formal sector.
The Bank warned that with the size of the workforce likely to increase by 910 million people between 2010 and 2050, African governments need to push their agenda for job creation with more ambitious and tailored policies.
It said despite a decade of progress, 54 percent of the population in 46 African countries are still trapped in poverty across multiple dimensions - health, education and living standards.
"Demands for better employment opportunities are the main reason behind continued public protests, having motivated a third of all public demonstrations between 2014 and 2016 - albeit in a context of decreasing levels of civil unrest," the Bank said.
