Robots and industRialization in developing countRies

Industrialization has historically been synonymous with development, while deindustrialization is a well-established trend in mature developed economies as they move towards services-based economies. Yet recent trends show that many developing countries – especially in Africa and Latin America – have witnessed their shares of manufacturing employment and output shrinking long before they have attained income levels comparable to those in the developed world. Such premature deindustrialization began during the adjustment programmes in the 1980s and 1990s, yet has continued, as commodity booms and speculative financial inflows have led to currency appreciation and a loss of manufacturing competitiveness, compounded by the rise of China’s manufacturing exports. The current question is therefore: now that the commodity bonanza is over, capital flows are reversing and China is turning towards a more balanced growth path driven more by domestic demand than exports, how can Africa and Latin America reignite industrialization? Whatever the chosen strategy, it will have to account for the rapidly increasing spread of new automation technologies and artificial intelligence in the form of robots.