Working Paper 40 - Industrial Restructuring in Africa During the1990s: Outcomes and Prospects

Since the advent of political independence, many governments in Africa have looked to themanufacturing sector as the main vehicle of structural transformation and reduction of dependenceon primary exports. However, it is now generally accepted that “misguided attempts to promoteindustrialisation without regard to comparative advantage or stage of development have led toinefficient use of resources in many countries” (World Bank, 1992:122). During the 1970s, almostone-third of African countries had negative average annual rates of manufacturing output growthand, in another quarter, these growth rates stagnated at below 2.5 percent. An important objective of the economic reform programmes that are currently being pursuedin almost all African countries is to eliminate the “inefficient use of resources” by industrial enterprises.It is clear that the industrial sector in most African countries is being profoundly affected by thisprocess of reform which has accelerated markedly during the 1990s. However, there has beenremarkably little independent analysis of just how successful industrial restructuring in Africa hasbeen. Two reviews of structural adjustment programmes undertaken by the World Bank in 1992and 1994 concluded that industrial restructuring had been successful in the majority of countriesunder scrutiny and that this was particularly so among those countries that had most consistentlypursued comprehensive macroeconomic reforms (see World Bank, 1992a and 1994). But othereconomists outside of the World Bank have been less sanguine and some have argued that “structuraladjustment programmes damage the prospects for industrialisation” (Stoneman, 1994:104) andmay, in fact, be leading to wholesale de-industrialisation.The purpose of this paper is to review the industrial performance of African economies duringthe 1990s and to then discuss the principal reasons why this performance, particularly with respectto the manufacturing sector, continues to be so poor in the majority of countries. The discussion willbe structured as follows. Section 1 outlines the broad objectives of industrial restructuring as thesehave been interpreted by the World Bank. Section 2 addresses the weaknesses of the main datasources that are generally relied upon in assessing the industrial sector. Section 3 reviews theperformance of the industrial sector, looking specifically at the following indicators: output growth,share of GDP, the sectoral composition of output, private and foreign investment, exports, andemployment and training. Section 4 then analyses the principal factors that have affected theperformance of the industrial sector, focusing in particular on investment, exports, and productivity.Finally, in Section 5, the prospects for the industrial sector and the role of government policy arebriefly considered.

Stack- and Queue-like Dynamics in Recurrent Neural Networks

What dynamics do simple recurrent networks (SRNs) develop to represent stack-like and queue-like memories? SRNs have been widely used as models in cognitive science. However, they are interesting in their own right as non-symbolic computing devices from the viewpoints of analogue computing and dynamical systems theory. In this paper, SRNs are trained oil two prototypical formal languages with recursive structures that need stack-like or queue-like memories for processing, respectively. The evolved dynamics are analysed, then interpreted in terms of simple dynamical systems, and the different ease with which SRNs aquire them is related to the properties of these simple dynamical Within the dynamical systems framework, it is concluded that the stack-like language is simpler than the queue-like language, without making use of arguments from symbolic computation theory

The Impact of HIV/AIDS on the University of Botswana: Developing a Comprehensive Strategic Response

Health Economics and Policy,

Levels and Variations of Violation in Rape.

This chapter investigates the variations in crime scene behaviour revealed in a sample of victim statements in cases of stranger sexual assault. Building on previous findings by Canter and Heritage (1990), and Canter (1994), it was hypothesised that there existed a scale of differing levels of violation by the offender. This scale, based upon actions in the offence, ranged from personal violation, through to physical violation and finally, at the most extreme level, sexual violation. Offences could also be differentiated at the personal and physical levels in terms of hostile, controlling, stealing or involving thematic emphases to the criminal’s actions. To test these hypotheses, crime scene data from the first detected offences of 112 British rapists were analysed using a multi-dimensional scaling procedure to explore the relationships amongst crime scene actions. The results provided empirical support for the four action themes as different expressions of various intensities of violation. The implications that these findings have for the investigation of stranger sexual assault and treatment of victims are discussed

Working papers in economics

A working paper on British transnational corporations with industrial operations in Anglophone Africa.This paper reviews the main findings of empirical research on British transnational corporations with industrial operations in the fifteen countries of English speaking Africa. The research reveals that not only is the level of equity involvements of British industrial TNCs in these countries of very minor importance in global terms but that, as a consequence of the deep and protracted economic crisis of the 1980s in Africa, nearly one third of these TNCs have withdrawn from the continent since 1979. The possible consequences of this process of corporate disengagement are explored, especially in the light of the now universal policy objective of African governments to attract foreign capital and, in particular, transnational corporations

A quantitative assessment of the utilisation of engineering manpower in Kenya

This paper outlines the main empirical results of which have emerged from a preliminary analysis of date concerned with the pattern of utilization of engineering manpower in Kenya. It forms part of a wider research study into the formation of engineering labour markets from the early colonial period up until the late 1970s. For expositional purposes, each of the three main occupational categories of engineering manpower -professional engineers, technicians and artisans- have been discussed separately. Four main aspects of utilisation have been delineated namely, overall stock, inter- and intra- sectoral employment distribution, utilisation of engineering knowledge and task analysis and remuneration structures. This essentially quantitative analysis of the pattern of engineering utilisation will be supplemented by more qualitative research findings based on archival work, interview surveys of private and public sector employers and information collected from, major trailing institutions