As Africa’s working age population continues to grow rapidly, the region needs to experience both economic growth and high levels of job creation before it can realize the demographic dividend. This paper uses economic complexity analytics to provide product-level insights into sub-Saharan Africa’s development path in comparison with that of the Eastern and Southern Asian regions. Specific emphasis is placed on the evolution of the manufacturing sector within these regions. The analysis from this study shows a sub-Saharan African (SSA) productive structure that is disconnected and characterized by products with low levels of economic complexity. The studyfurther shows that the productive structure in SSA is inherently characterized by lower levels of economic complexity, which informed the notion of limited productive capabilities. This stands in contrast to the East and South Asian productive structure, which is connected and complex. This result implies that while the sheer scale and diversity of the manufacturing sector in Asia allows for the generation of a large number and diversity of employment opportunities, that of the Africanmanufacturing sector is marginal in nature and points to limited employment opportunities.

由于非洲的工作年龄人口持续快速增长，该地区需要经历经济增长和高水平的就业创造，才能实现人口红利。本文运用经济复杂性分析方法，从产品层面分析撒哈拉以南非洲与东亚和南亚地区的发展路径。特别强调的是这些区域内制造业部门的演变。本研究的分析表明，撒哈拉以南非洲(SSA)的生产结构是不连续的，其特征是产品的经济复杂性水平较低。该研究进一步表明，SSA的生产结构本质上具有较低的经济复杂性水平，这说明了有限生产能力的概念。这与东亚和南亚的生产结构形成了鲜明对比，东亚和南亚的生产结构是相互联系和复杂的。这一结果表明，尽管亚洲制造业的规模和多样性可以创造大量和多样化的就业机会，但非洲制造业的规模和多样性在本质上是微不足道的，就业机会有限。