Template-type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Author-Name: Mensah, Emmanuel B.
Author-Email: mensah@merit.unu.edu
Author-Workplace-Name: Maastricht University, UNU-MERIT
Author-Name: Owusu, Solomon
Author-Email: owusu@merit.unu.edu
Author-Workplace-Name: Maastricht University, UNU-MERIT
Author-Name: Foster-McGregor, Neil
Author-Email: foster@merit.unu.edu
Author-Workplace-Name: Maastricht University, UNU-MERIT
Title: Productive efficiency, technological change and catch up within Africa
Abstract: The peculiar nature of African development presents unique technological
	 challenges. This often requires African-induced innovation or a
	 combination of frontier and local technologies to solve problems unique
	 to Africa. However, most researchers study technological change in
	 Africa in relation to some globally defined technology frontier. The
	 diffusion of knowledge from this global frontier to other regions
	 however decreases in intensity with geographic and relational distance.
	 Given that African countries are geographically and relationally close
	 to each other, this paper makes a departure from this existing
	 literature and studies technological change and technological catch up
	 within African by considering catch-up with respect to an African
	 technology leader. We do this by using structural methods (Shift and
	 Share catch-up decomposition) and nonparametric methods (Data
	 Envelopment Analysis) to estimate an African production frontier. We
	 further measure productivity change in sub-Saharan Africa and
	 disentangle the change due to general technological progress and
	 efficiency change using the Malmquist Productivity Index (MPI). Our
	 results show that Botswana and Mauritius are the only two countries in
	 Africa which have converged to the productivity level as well as the
	 efficiency level of the frontier. This successful convergence is driven
	 more by efficiency catch-up and less by technological change. We explore
	 the special role of efficiency catch-up by decomposing it into
	 within-sector convergence, between -sector convergence and initial
	 specialization. The results highlight the special role of structural
	 change in catch-up. This paper contributes to recent evidence suggesting
	 that countries can climb up the income ladder at a faster rate through a
	 two-pronged transformation – i.e. structural change and technological
	 catch-up.
Classification-JEL: O30, O47, N17
Keywords: Africa, Technological change, Technological Catch-up, Economic Growth
Series: UNU-MERIT Working Papers
Creation-Date: 20200804
Number: 2020-033
File-URL: https://unu-merit.nl/publications/wppdf/2020/wp2020-033.pdf
File-Format: application/pdf
File-Size: 275 Kb
Handle: RePEc:unm:unumer:2020033