Book review: One Thing Leads to Another—Promoting Industrialisation by Making the Most of the Commodity Boom in Sub-Saharan Africa, by Mike Morris, Raphael Kaplinsky and David Kaplan, 2012, published free online

摘要

This book makes a superb factual and strategic contribution to the policy road map for economic development and poverty reduction in Africa. Through a wide-ranging empirical survey of extractive industries across the continent, the authors show that improved linkages with local suppliers and customers can drive sustainable industrial growth to capture benefits from the mining boom. However, they strongly criticise the policy vision in most African countries, calling it vacuous, with misguided focus, weak management and will, and pervasive corruption. African countries would be well on the way to defeating the resource curse, they say, if mining industries could source more goods and services locally, add more value before export, and link to related sectors such as agriculture. Such industrial linkages have high benefit cost ratios, but are too often neglected.