Abstract
Africa has, for centuries, been an essential supplier of resources that are integral to a wide range of global industries. Understanding Africa depends on understanding the role of the continent in global value chains (GVCs). Academic and policy-oriented debates tend to focus on industrial upgrading in GVCs, neglecting environmental and social aspects, although Africa's integration into GVCs has come along with worsening environmental and social conditions in many cases. Infamous examples are labour rights in Ethiopia's textile sector and oil spills in the Niger Delta.
This does not mean that there is no literature on such problems. Especially critical scholars have produced numerous articles and books that uncover the severe side effects of the continent's participation in the world economy. Much less has been written on how GVCs in Africa can be made more sustainable. The volume Africa and Sustainable Global Value Chains provides corresponding insights. It consists of four sections. Section 1 presents background information and explains how corporations from overseas engage with Africa. It includes philosophical considerations (chapter 1), a literature-based overview of how large firms can push sustainability (chapter 2), a bibliometric analysis of the literature on GVCs and sustainability (chapter 3), and a calculation of what African countries gain and lose because of GVCs (chapter 4).
Section 2 begins with a study on Nigeria that uncovers conditions essential to sustainable practices in agriculture (chapter 5). Challenges are shown with regard to smallholder coffee farming in Kenya (chapter 6) and the Zambian mining sector (chapter 7). A key message is that local suppliers need more support to implement sustainable practices. Section 3 comprises case studies on Nigeria's trade policy and yam exports (chapter 8), the benefits and pitfalls of foreign investment in Ethiopia's textile sector (chapter 9), as well as GVC participation of small businesses in handicraft in Egypt and Ghana (chapters 10 and 11). Section 4 shows what overseas corporations can do to promote sustainability, presenting insights from West Africa (chapter 12), Egypt (chapter 13) and Nigeria (chapter 14).
Africa and Sustainable Global Value Chains has many merits. The authorship is diverse, consisting of colleagues from various African countries, as well as China, Europe and North America. It indicates cross-continental cooperation by several authors. Each chapter begins with a structured abstract that summarises the purpose, approach, findings, implications and originality of the research. Several chapters may inspire follow-up studies. Chapter 13, for example, benefits from an innovative conceptual approach. It brings GVC analysis together with a governance triangle that consists of business, society and the state. Chapter 5 identifies accountability, backward integration, government involvement and stakeholder engagement as critical conditions for sustainable GVCs in agriculture. Many authors have carried out field research – mostly qualitative interviews. Chapter 6 refers to a survey of 122 coffee producers in central Kenya. Chapter 7 works with a convincing mixed-methods approach.
There are also shortcomings. The quantitative approach in chapter 4 is difficult to understand. A sample of 14 handicraft export firms from Ghana – as used in chapter 10 – is not large enough for statistical analysis. The assessment of European–West African trade in chapter 12 is based on very simple trade data. Intervening variables are not taken into consideration and the subsequent elaboration on “organisational learning” lacks empirical evidence.
Even though the countries and sectors studied are certainly relevant, the book does not address topics that are almost self-suggesting for sustainability in the early 2020s. Green hydrogen and renewable energies should have been analysed. Many African countries – in particular the DR Congo, Ghana, Mali, Namibia and Zimbabwe – have lithium resources. It would have been intriguing to show that electric mobility, being a supposed driver of sustainability in the Global North, leads to development outcomes in the Global South that are not sustainable at all.
Another weakness of the volume is that it does not have an introduction. There is no concluding chapter to tie the threads together. The editors could have provided a common analytical framework or at least two or three research questions to be answered by all authors. Since this is missing, the chapters are stand-on-its-own work, whose findings are limited to the specific cases under investigation. Readers do not learn whether there is anything that characterises Africa in terms of sustainable GVCs, anything that unites African cases and makes them different from sustainable GVCs elsewhere in the world.
Hence, there are – at least in the understanding of this reviewer – several aspects of Africa and Sustainable Global Value Chains that could have been done in a better way. This does not mean that the book is not worth being read. On the contrary, it offers many distinct approaches to and perspectives on GVCs and sustainability in Africa. The inroads built by it are informative. They have the potential to inspire future research on the topic.