Africa’s industrialisation should not be measured only by how much a factory produces, but by what becomes possible because the factory exists. A factory can generate output, jobs and exports without fundamentally changing the productive structure around it. The deeper form of industrialisation begins when the knowledge, skills, technologies, suppliers and capabilities created by one investment can move beyond it, into new firms, new sectors and new markets. This changes the question of value addition. The objective is not simply to process more of Africa’s commodities before they leave the continent. It is to ensure that each investment leaves behind capabilities that can be reused, recombined and extended into activities that did not exist before. This is where regional integration becomes critical. A regional market is not merely a larger market for finished goods. It is a larger field in which capabilities can circulate, specialised suppliers can emerge, technologies can be adapted and production networks can deepen. The real measure of industrialisation, therefore, is not only what an economy produces today, but what it becomes capable of producing tomorrow. A factory transforms a commodity. Industrial capacity transforms the possibilities of an economy. Read on the Africa at LSE blog of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

The modern economy is becoming increasingly intangible, but tax systems are still built to see what is tangible. A factory announces its presence through machines, workers, inventories and trucks. The service economy leaves a different footprint: a laptop, a digital payment, a remote contract, a transaction that crosses borders without moving a single good. The value is there, but the taxpayer may be harder to find. As developing economies become more service-driven, the challenge is no longer simply to tax economic activity, but to make it visible to the tax systems designed to capture it. Read on Eurasia Review.