Let me first register my doubts. It is tempting currently to assume that since the world has built artificial intelligence and smart technology, Africa can leverage these bounties to leap forward and escape the messy, labour-intensive stages of industrialisation that Europe and Asia undertook, and land directly into a clean, digital, competitive manufacturing future. I think that that is quite unlikely.
For our lessons on industrial growth and expansion, I will draw inspiration from Germany, which is one of the most industrially complex nations on earth, and a frontrunner in European industrial tradition. It took Germany more than a century of tinkering with manufacturing to industrialise.
The link with formal education and vocational training, which came to characterise the German education structure, enabled graduates from Germany’s universities to be competitive in employment because they left school with skills companies actually needed, not just certificates of completion. If there’s anything in the German model of developing an industrial economy that African countries should have borrowed as early as yesterday, it is this.
Between the 1830s and 1870s, a traditional network of small and medium-sized enterprises and artisans emerged in Germany, called the Mittelstand. They were supported by a training system whereby young people learned by splitting their education week between the classroom and the real workshop floor. This enabled German children to learn a skill and a trade under people who were actually practising it and building things.
Seeing potential in this development, the German government, employers and unions designed a strategy to have a joint training system. Surprisingly, Germany was even a fractured state at this point. During the take-off period of industrial expansion in Germany between the 1830s and 1850s, Germany did not exist as a unified nation-state. It was still a loose conglomeration of 39 independent sovereign states, including Kingdoms like Prussia, Bavaria, and Saxony, which had been established by the Vienna Congress of 1814-1815. Germany therefore lacked a centralised power at this period of industrial expansion, and instead was largely governed by a federal assembly (the Bundesversammlung), which occasionally met in Frankfurt, and was mainly under the control of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia.
To bypass this fractured political dispensation, the states formed the Zollverein (German Customs Union) in 1834 under Prussian leadership. This made it possible for the Mittelstand to trade across the borders without tariff limitations, even before the country was politically unified.
A few African countries have adopted and even partnered with German institutions and organisations to implement robust skills training programs. One of the prominent examples is Rwanda, where the TVET Scholarship Programme supports over 4,000 trainees under the administration of the Rwanda TVET Board (RTB) alongside Germany’s KfW Development Bank, according to the Rwanda TVET Board, Quarterly Newsletter (July–September 2025). The initiative aims to sponsor high-performing students from low-income families in technical secondary schools to acquire marketable skills. They also have the BIWE Dual Vocational Training, which is managed by Bildungswerk der Baden-Württembergischen Wirtschaft e.V. (BIWE). The program trains young Rwandans and equips them with skills for practical fields like sales, plumbing, welding, and customer service by merging school learning with real corporate work experience. Such programs are supporting Rwanda in building a critical mass of a workforce that will most likely change Rwanda’s industrial fortunes in future.
The entry-level manufacturing jobs which historically employed large numbers of relatively low-skilled workers in labour-intensive jobs such as sewing garments, assembling electronics and other basic goods are unfortunately the ones under threat from advanced industrial capabilities such as robotics, predictive maintenance systems, and smart factories in general. This risks reducing or shrinking the opportunities available to African countries where budding youth populations are yearning for employment in those kinds of entry-level manufacturing jobs in global manufacturing which earlier industrialisers had. For instance, according to a 2016 UNCTAD policy brief, “Robots and Industrialisation in Developing Countries,” citing World Bank research, estimates that up to two-thirds of jobs in developing countries could be susceptible to automation, with industrial robots concentrated in the automotive, electrical and electronics industries.
Therefore, just like Germany and other developed countries, I believe that Africa should first endure building the unglamorous foundation of scaling vocational skills, building robust institutions that link the training of learners to real industry needs, and supporting small specialised firms that can grow into suppliers. This also requires more localised economic integration between various African countries, and protecting our markets from the high-level disruption of the Artificial Intelligence revolution.
Whereas we do not have to copy-paste every aspect of German industrial tradition, in fact, given our disparate contexts, we cannot replicate everything the way Germany did it, there is nevertheless no version of industrial competitiveness, digital or otherwise, that can skip the step in an industrial journey that involves doing the foundational work of having a skilled workforce. Of course, workers also need the support of energy/ electricity to boost their productivity and increase the country’s industrial output.
Senior research fellow, Development Watch Centre.
Nnanda Kizito Sseruwagi is a Senior research fellow, Development Watch Centre.
