Determining Industrial Change Effectiveness in Developing Countries: Focus on Ghana

Abstract

Ghana continues to grapple with the most appropriate approach to change the structure of the economy to ensure sustainable economic growth that will lead to social stability, closing up of the income inequality gap, alleviation of poverty, expansion of the economy and development of the industrial as well as agricultural and services sector. This requires pragmatic policy initiatives that are robust and address fundamental challenges facing industrial Ghana. This kind of policy must be driven by industry to avoid information asymmetry problem which can lead to defeat of such policy tools from the onset. This paper,  (conceptual) using literature approach, has established EKs successful industrial change model as a means to influence industrial change activities and to analyze industrial change effectiveness in Ghana. It has proposed that, an effective industrial change, which is fundamentally rooted on policy changes, requires several dimensions to ensure its success. The proposed model asserts that government and industry are the main participants in such a task. However, there are social factors and SMEs development factors that can equally ensure an industrial change succeeds. Similarly, although government should mainly contribute to ensuring the industrial sector is able to drive industrial success which is the result of total factor productivity, socio-economic development and business expansion, government can equally contribute directly through SOEs and public-private partnerships (PPP). The paper therefore concludes that Government should collaborate with the industrial sector if this could be achieved.

Keywords: Industrial policy, industrial development, industrial change, developing countries, Ghana

DOI: 10.7176/JESD/10-10-20

Publication date:May 31^st 2019