Noah Smith, Columnist

Africa’s Only Hope Is Industrialization

The continent has a chance to pick up some of the manufacturing leaving higher-cost Asia.

April 24, 2019 at 12:00 AM UTC

Noah Smith is a former Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He was an assistant professor of finance at Stony Brook University, and he blogs at Noahpinion.

One way out.
Photographer: Gianluigi Guercia/AFP/Getty Images

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African industrialization has to be among the most important things happening in the world right now. The vast continent, with more than 1.2 billion people, is home to an increasing fraction of the human beings who are still mired in extreme poverty:

By 2030, the World Bank projects that almost all the people in extreme poverty will live in sub-Saharan Africa. The reason is twofold. First, Africa’s population is growing rapidly: