Are Labor Costs in Africa too High?

The puzzling and counter-intuitive findings of the project “Are Labor Costs in Africa too High?” gained widespread media coverage worldwide, including news agencies from Kenya, South Africa, Germany, the United Kingdom as well as the United States.

The Economist, for example, discusses the diminishing role of African countries in global production and cites that one of the possible reasons is the higher labour costs than other low and middle income countries, a novel finding of the project.

A list of media stories about the GLM|LIC project:

  1. Daily Nation (Kenya) “Kenya can’t imitate China’s economic model, as things stand”
  2. CGD (US) “Can Manufacturing Kickstart Growth in Africa? – Podcast with Vijaya Ramachandran”
  3. The Economist (UK) “Technology cannot solve all of Africa’s problems, but it can help with many”
  4. Hivisasa (Kenya) “Kenya ranked poorly among continental manufacturing leaders”
  5. Quartz Africa (US) “Even Africa’s poorest countries are too expensive to be the world’s next manufacturing hub” and “The story of Ethiopia’s incredible economic rise
  6. The Star (South Africa) “Why Ethiopia is overtaking Kenya in the race to become the ‘New China’ “
  7. Welt-Sichten (DE) “Zu teuer als Werkbank der Welt”