Episode 06. Rwanda’s “Growth Miracle” in Context: Industrial Policy and State-Business Relations in Sub-Saharan Africa with Pritish Behuria Artwork

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Episode 06. Rwanda’s “Growth Miracle” in Context: Industrial Policy and State-Business Relations in Sub-Saharan Africa with Pritish Behuria

May 20, 2021 • David Karas • Season 1 • Episode 6

Pritish Behuria from the University of Manchester has a long expertise in studying industrial policy and comparative developmental trajectories in Sub-Saharan Africa. In today’s episode, we first talk about the broader context of a supposedly post-neoliberal developmental framework where industrial policy is again on the agenda - even though problems such as fiscal space, structural change, access to technology and dependency on foreign capital have changed little if at all. Pritish also shares his analysis of the Rwandan case - the apparent success story of a "growth miracle", which some explain with robust Weberian state capacities, while others brandish it as a model of financial liberalisation and good governance. Pritish analyzes a domestic political economy, where market liberalisation marginalised domestic capitalists, who couldn’t as a result play an active role in diversification and structural change. Far from the miracle narrative, the Rwandan trajectory thus illustrates the inherent tensions and contradictions which traverse developmental strategies of state-led development at the current juncture.

You can follow Pritish at:

@pritishbehuria on Twitter

https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/pritish.behuria.html

https://manchester.academia.edu/PritishBehuria

Check out Recent Work by Pritish:

Behuria P (2021) The curious case of domestic capitalists in Africa: towards a political economy of diversified business groups. Journal of Contemporary African Studies. DOI: 10.1080/02589001.2021.1899144. 1-17. Based on: https://www.effective-states.org/wp-content/uploads/working_papers/final-pdfs/esid_wp_115_behuria.pdf

Behuria P (2019) Twenty-first Century Industrial Policy in a Small Developing Country: The Challenges of Reviving Manufacturing in Rwanda. Development and Change 50(4): 1033-1062. Available at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/dech.12498

Behuria P (2018) Learning from Role Models in Rwanda: Incoherent Emulation in the Construction of a Neoliberal Developmental State. New Political Economy 23(4): 422-440. Available at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13563467.2017.1371123

References recommended by Pritish:

Kimonyo J-P (2019) Transforming Rwanda. Challenges on the Road to Reconstruction. Lynne Rienner Publishers. Available at: https://www.rienner.com/title/Transforming_Rwanda_Challenges_on_the_Road_to_Reconstruction

Oqubay A (2015) Made in Africa: Industrial Policy in Ethiopia. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Available at: https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198739890.001.0001/acprof-9780198739890

Cramer C, Sender J and Oqubay A (2020) African Economic Development. Evidence, Theory, Policy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Open Access Available at: https://fdslive.oup.com/www.oup.com/academic/pdf/openaccess/9780198832331.pdf