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Capacity development | Using the Economic Transformation Database (ETD) to study industrialization trends in the developing world

Presenters: Emmanuel Mensah & Hagen Kruse, Groningen Growth and Development Centre (GGDC), University of Groningen, the Netherlands

This session presents the new GGDC/UNU-WIDER Economic Transformation Database (ETD) against the backdrop of the debate on Africa’s manufacturing renaissance.

First, we introduce the ETD, illustrate the scope of data, main sources and methods, and provide a comparison with other existing sectoral datasets. Second, we use the ETD to document recent industrialization patterns in the developing world – most notably a manufacturing renaissance in developing Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Finally, we discuss promising directions for future research using the ETD.