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ABSTRACT
To date, regional automotive value chains have not developed to any significant extent in Africa. Growing demand for vehicles across the continent, closer economic integration and the desire on the part of some larger African countries to establish an automotive industry have improved prospects. But major obstacles remain: the political geography of the subcontinent and the tendency of the industry to cluster in a few locations indicate that many smaller countries are likely to miss out on attracting investments. This should not matter if they are attracting investment in other sectors. It does however imply that it is unlikely that the automotive industry will drive regional integration independently of a broader integration process which sees the development of regional value chains across a multitude of sectors helping to bind the continent into a larger common market.
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Notes
1 See, for example, Carrillo (Citation2004); Laplane & Sarti (Citation2004); Layan & Lung (Citation2004); and Markowitz (Citation2016).
2 For an early assessment of developmental regionalism in the developing country context, see Sloan (Citation1971).
3 Smaller plants could, of course, be viable where high effective rates of protection on vehicle assembly prevail.
4 Completely knocked down (CKD) assembly involves the full assembly of the car including body panels and requires much higher investment in the assembly plant than SKD.
5 Cited in Jeremiah (Citation2017).
6 Report on AutoPact Orientation Workshop, Annexure 5, p. 79, in Barnes et al. (Citation2019).