Clusters in Africa's Economy as a Perspective Model of Production

For attracting private capital to the economy, African governments allocate territories for commercial and industrial use within Special Economic Zones (SEZ). This is an important factor in export diversification (primarily of manufactured products), expanding country’s participation in global value chains, and creating new jobs. Despite different specialization from labor-intensive (textile production, agriculture, etc.) to high-tech sectors, most of the existing SEZs are ineffective due to the underdevelopment of African markets, weak competition, large-scale corruption, but to a large extent - as a result of insufficient interconnection between individual producers.

Economic space organization through the creation of clusters - production efficiency and the emergence of a special type of competition -allows them to use common infrastructure, labor and raw materials markets; jointly export products; exchange knowledge and technologies, which is significant in terms of the industrial revolution 4.0. Clusters have the characteristics of “growth poles” - territorial conglomerates that, due to their special position and infrastructural advantages, become locomotives of industrial growth, spreading to other regions.

This is especially important given the prevalence of highly inefficient micro, small and medium-sized companies in African economies, a significant part of which is in the informal sector. Clusters, emerging as a rule “from below”, can turn into structure-forming elements of the economy (both at the national and regional levels), but only on condition of organizational and financial support from individual states and their economic communities. This is in the African economies interest, as evidenced by their gradual reorientation towards the domestic market development, as well the regional market expansion within the framework of integration associations.

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