Author: Peter Harrold, M Jayawickrama, D. Bhattasali.

This paper examines the economic performance of East and Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, and attempts to identify some of the practical lessons that Africa can learn from Asia, in order to facilitate industrial development and export growth. Africa's factor endowments and economic structures are quite similar to those found in Southeast Asia in the 1960s. The Southeast Asian countries - Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand - have achieved rapid industrial growth over the past 3 decades, while Africa has struggled with adjustment, and witnessed a marginal industrial response. The emergence of a significant gap in per capita incomes between these two groups of countries, however, is a relatively new phenomenon. This suggests hope for Africa, if an appropriate policy environment can be sustained over a period of years. In this paper, 3 country comparisons, of Nigeria and Indonesia, Cote d'Ivoire and Malaysia, and Tanzania, Ghana and Thailand, illustrate the critical nature of government policies, such as exchange rate policy and the role assigned to the agricultural sector. Southeast Asia, in addition to maintaining the