 We are 55 million today. We expect to be 72 million in 2025. What are all these young people going to be doing? The TPS population is more than 100 million. Every year is growing by about 2 million, which means we have to create more jobs. Africa has seen considerable growth over the past two decades, but the number of jobs created has been very far from what is needed. There is going to be a huge need for new jobs for this massive expanding workforce. The most important thing for African countries is job, job, job. How to provide meaningful jobs and transform livelihoods in Africa. In East Asia, industrialisation played a key role. But what about Africa? An international team of economists from UNU wider, the African Development Bank and the Brookings Institution have been seeking to answer three questions. Why there is such little industry in Africa? Does it matter? And what can you do about it? These questions have led to a decade of research and five books looking at what can be learned from the success of East Asian countries. This has led to rethinking the industries that make up industrialisation as well as rethinking industrial policy for the 21st century. If we look at the successes of the 20th century, industrialisation was synonymous with manufacturing. The East Asian economic miracle is a manufacturing miracle. Manufacturing has had a transformative effect on societies, not just in terms of their ability to make money. It kind of creates human capabilities. There are at least three reasons why manufacturing may be a leading sector in the process of industrialisation. First, manufacturing is tradeable. It's subject to international competition and firms are forced to innovate and to look for ways to increase their output per worker. Second, manufacturing is learning intensive. Firms themselves learn in the course of production and because manufacturing firms tend to band together in cities or in clusters, that knowledge can spill over to other firms in the economy. Third, manufacturing firms help developing economies to catch up through a process called unconditional convergence. Manufacturing pushes firms to reach the levels of productivity of the best firms in their industry, even firms in low-income countries. But can manufacturing bring about industrialisation for African countries, as it did in East Asian countries? There are reasons to suggest, maybe not. That model that was the basis of the success of East Asia won't be available to the same extent for Africa going forward. One reason East Asian countries themselves. When East Asia broke into the global economy, it confronted the global north, a high-wage but high-productivity part of the world. Today, African firms are competing with East Asia, a relatively lower-wage high-productivity part of the world. Another reason is, thanks in part to automation, manufacturing as a share of global output is in decline. The export markets available to developing countries in the past may not be available in the future. That makes the path to export-led growth and industrialisation questionable. Manufacturing, historical and traditional, has always provided us with that opportunity. If that is not the one, what are the other opportunities that have opened up? If we accept that manufacturing cannot be the only answer, what then are some of the alternative ways to drive industrialisation in African countries? Do we need to rethink what industries make up industrialisation? Manufacturing is still important. Yes, but other sectors are also important. The UNU-Wider Research Project has found a group of activities with key characteristics that are very similar to manufacturing. These are industries that play to Africa's strengths and are capable of employing large numbers of people. They call these industries without smog stacks. These are relatively new industries that, thanks to technology and changing transport costs, are available in the 21st century as engines of growth. They include portaculture, agro-processing, tourism, tradable services such as information and communication-intensive activities and light manufacturing. Africa is moving in services in light manufacturing. Those who are looking at a wider set of options and opportunities in industries without smog stacks is precisely the way to think about it now. Because these industries without smog stacks share a lot of the characteristics that smokestack industries have. They also respond to broadly similar policies. As a policymaker, you're not confronted with a stark choice between do I do manufacturing or do I do these other activities. You have a little bit of a win-win situation. What then are the win-win strategies that can support both manufacturing and industries without smog stacks? Do we need to rethink industrial policy for Africa in the 21st century? Many people think industrial policy is a bad thing because in the past many industrial policies did not work. Industrial policy has finally become a legitimate topic for conversation among economists and that wasn't so for a very long time. The UNU wider research finds four drivers of industrialization that work for manufacturing as well as for industries without smog stacks. First is the basics. Having the right infrastructure, skills and competition. And is the basics the answer? They're necessary but not sufficient. Second is the need for an East Asian-style export push. Africa just has to say okay, where can I position myself given the comparative advantage. I may not have comparative advantage in producing the whole good from beginning to end but I might just have the comparative advantage in a certain segment of this production. We now live in a world of global value chains. The good news is they offer an opportunity to break into a segment of the global market that is most suited to the capabilities of firms. The bad news is they're highly intensive in trade logistics and trade logistics has been an area in which African countries haven't excelled. Third is the need to build capabilities and export push will force firms to raise their game but there are other policy tools such as attracting foreign direct investment. Thinking through how one strengthens the supply chain relationships in the domestic economy. Management training and better management practices may hold part of the key to improving productivity. Fourth, countries need to encourage agglomeration and clustering so that the benefits of exports and raised firm capabilities can spill over to the rest of the economy. This often requires the government making the first move. Special economic zones are a means of creating clusters. The first challenge would be to bring Africa's SECs up to world class. The strategy we have focused is to build sustainable industrial parks. All the parks are using the standards which are internationally accepted. Ethiopia provides cheaper energy. We provide land at zero costs to manufacturers. The research finds that these four drivers are fundamentally interrelated. You have to have a strategy that does more than simply tries to fix the investment climate and makes substantial progress across that broad front. So should African countries follow the same path to prosperity or should they forge a new one? The lesson for Africa is to follow the same path but to adapt to the new realities and new industries of the 21st century. Done right, industrialization in Africa can transform the lives of hundreds of millions of people. Find out more in our series of lectures and interviews available online.