African Productive Capacity Initiative

The Government of African nations have long realized the imperative of industrialization for their economic and social growth.

Over the years, several initiatives were launched that, it was hoped, would accelerate the industrial development of Africa, but for one reason or another, most of them were disappointing. In 2001, the Conference of African Ministers of Industry (CAMI) took a decision to focus on two aspects of industrialization rather than diluting its efforts by attempting to solve too many problems at once. It was agreed that the first items to tackle on the agenda for Africa’s industrialization were (a) the improvement of industrial performance at the sub-regional level and on the diversification of productive capacities using Africa’s own natural resource base as an input for industrial transformation and up-grading, and (b) the expansion of integration efforts, taking advantage of existing support measures to access regional and global markets.

The CAMI discussions took place against backdrop of another pan-African initiative. The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), was launched in July 2001, by the Organization of African Unity (now renamed the African Union) to serve as a framework for the continent’s efforts to achieve socio-economic development. November 2003 saw a synchronization of the two initiatives, when the African Union adopted the CAMI approach - that meanwhile had acquired the name African Productive Capacity Initiative (APCI) -as the industrial component of its broader development plan for Africa.

ACPI forced a rethinking of the continent’s approach to industrial development. Up to that point, the emphasis had been on trade, with correspondingly less attention to productive capacity. There was little to be gained by African Productive Capacity Initiative opening markets if the continent had no, or few , products of an appropriate standard to sell. Once the new approach had been understood and accepted by all countries, the next challenge was how to popularise the initiative at the national and regional levels. This is where a number of regional organizations in Africa came to be involved in ACPI.

UNIDO was a natural partner for ACPI and lost no time in mobilizing resources for the initiative. A modernization and upgrading programme was launched by UNIDO. As a first step, it held a number of expert group meetings in cooperation with the regional economic communities, at which the national action plans of each country were presented and discussed. These formed the basis for the respective road-maps for each sub-region. By the end of 2006, five regional expert group meetings had taken place, and UNIDO began to put together sub-regional and national programmes, taking into account the priorities agreed upon in each expert group meeting. The emerging programmes include, to a greater or lesser extent, four main elements, namely productive capacity and quality promotion; standards and conformity assessment; regional accreditation; and industrial upgrading and modernization.