Publication: Growth without Borders : A Regional Growth Pole Diagnostic for Southern Africa
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2013-10
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2013-10
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Several countries in Southern Africa have enormous potential to expand trade and mutually benefit from regional integration, and thus truly achieve 'growth without borders'. At the same time, several African countries are adopting growth pole strategies in order to deepen the economic linkages around the development of their natural resources and improve their competitiveness and connectivity to domestic and international markets. This report stems from economic sector work whose purpose was to identify potential growth poles across Angola, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, and Zimbabwe in three industries, agribusiness, mining, and tourism, that might benefit from improved regional integration. This report used geographic information systems (GIS) to identify potential growth poles based on the spatial distribution of foreign direct investment (FDI), market connectivity, revenue sources, and other input factors and then selected from that list those areas which might benefit from regional cooperation. This report provides background information, elaborates the concepts, details the spatial analysis framework, selects specific areas for a rapid assessment, summarizes findings, and outlines future work. The overarching purpose is not to explain or quantify the links between identified factors, but rather to find spatial correlation between factors in order to begin a discussion about defining a data driven way of finding suitable regional growth poles.
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“World Bank. 2013. Growth without Borders : A Regional Growth Pole Diagnostic for Southern Africa. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/16708 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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