In the Economist:
More a marathon than a sprint
Viewed from above, the great steel roofs of Nigeria’s textile mills are an impressive sight, occupying block after block in the northern city of Kano. Yet from the ground a very different picture emerges. Entire estates sit eerily empty in what was once the country’s industrial heartland. A handful of indigo-dye pits and the odd leather tannery constitute what little is left of a manufacturing business that was booming just a couple of decades ago. The collapse of Nigeria’s textile industry, which has gone from employing more than 350,000 people to fewer than a tenth as many, reflects a wider problem of deindustrialisation across Africa that has occurred during a decade of rapid growth driven by high commodity prices...[more]