Opening Up — and Shutting Down? Synthesis, Policies and Conclusions

Abstract

This study has produced a wealth of findings on liberalization, technology development and manufacturing performance in Kenya, Tanzania and Zimbabwe. However the interpretation of these findings is not straightforward. All three countries are opening up at a difficult and uncertain period in their economic life — not an ideal setting for studying technological development, which thrives in a growing and stable environment. The impact of liberalization is (as usual in these studies) difficult to disentangle from that of other factors affecting enterprise behaviour. The degree and nature of liberalization itself differs between countries, making cross-country comparisons difficult; moreover the two activities studied, garments and engineering, face differing exposure to import competition. Then there are the inevitable difficulties in generalizing from the experience of individual firms to a broader industrial setting or to different countries.