Page 229 - Volume 2_CHANGES_merged_with links

Obstacles to progress

Realities

Coffee
Burundi* (76%)
Ethiopia* (62%)
Uganda* (83%)
Copper:
Zambia* (52%)
Diamonds:
Botswana (91%)
Democratic Republic of Congo* (71%)
Tobacco:
Malawi* (59%)
Uranium:
Niger* (59%)

“Numerous countries are dependent on two commodities for the vast majority of their export
earnings (for example, adding cobalt for Democratic Republic of Congo accounts for an

additional 14 per cent of export earnings, totalling 85 per cent). And countries such as Burkina
Faso (41 per cent), Chad (37 per cent), Benin and Mali (both 41 per cent) depend heavily on
cotton for their export earnings, while not reaching the 50 per cent mark.

***
As of 2000, manufactures only represented 30 per cent of Africa's merchandise exports – only
a slight improvement on 1980, when it was 20 per cent.(31)
***
Part of African countries' difficulty in developing their industries can be attributed to premature
and poorly planned import-tariff liberalisation, imposed by the IFIs in the 1980s and 1990s.

African countries cut tariffs dramatically during these decades. By the end of the 1990s,
average tariffs in sub-Saharan Africa were around half of the level at the start of the 1980s, and

the number of NTBs in Sub-Saharan Africa had been cut in half.(32)
In the late 1990s, Zambia cut its average tariff to 11.5%, well below the average tariff for
developing countries today, which stands at 29 per cent.

***
Like many developing countries, Kenya pursued an import-substitution policy in the 1960s and

1970s, which led to the rapid development of an industrial sector. GDP growth averaged 5 per
cent in the years after independence, and manufacturing grew even faster, by 10 per cent each

year.
However, Kenya's increasing fiscal difficulties led the World Bank and IMF to advocate a course
of structural adjustment in the 1980s. By the early 1990s most controls on international trade

had been abolished, and by 1996 the country's top import tariffs had been reduced by four
fifths from their peak value.