Perhaps the relevance of this piece is trivial, based on the fact that we might still be in festive moods. Usually, around this time of the year, I would give a roundup of my favourite articles to have been blessed to share with you.
However, my short-term absence from writing has kind of invoked my desire to write one last rustic conversation for the year. And in this light, sometimes keeping away from expressing opinion and choosing to pay attention to others’ opinions on industrial policy framework development can really allow the opportunity to further fathom the leitmotif brutal critique of our economic aspirations and our overtly “political” thought on our democratic breakthrough.
My main concern from such opinions is that we have individualised our expectations on industrial policy framework development. We turn to perceive industrial policy framework development from a “how it should benefit me as an individual.”
The question would then be, why does concern for the individual perception of industrial policy framework development matter over a collective perspective? It matters because in most ways, it frames the basis and possibilities of our current inquiry.
If we are to think about it in reference to the history of our contested economic direction of respective districts, this individualized perception of industrialized policy framework development is associated with path dependency that will lock our economic development attempts between two divergent paths, that is, one that draws us closer to the growing trend of cheap labour and the other that seeds of an industrial development path that then drives away from a genuine industrial growth and development of local governance, prudent to the long-term prosperity of the economy, as industrial frameworks would be developed custom to “influence”. ( I deliberately leave out the definition of “influence” open to proclivity of relatability).
However, my arguments are that any attempts at industrial framework development, if they are to be prudent at a localized level, must respond to existential economic challenges. If we were to consider a contemporary development framework, say for example the youth development fund which is under the auspices of what we may consider to be a Constituency Development Model, its aims and objectives would be to coordinate all development efforts at constituency level by bringing all tiers of government behind economic development missions deemed critical to the attainment of the National Development Plan as a whole.
It could be said that failure to coordinate and perceive the industrial development framework from a collective approach will frame the allocation and distribution of financial and other resources, however fails to substantively frame the economic basis and motivations of the interventions that will change the fundamental social milieu of the districts.
Rustically Speaking, Industrial Framework Development should consider market structures, household income and consumption patterns as well as development at firm level, thus influence economic outcomes. Agree? I would like to emphasize on Market structures in this article. Let’s consider the YDF for instance. From observation, consideration for funding has been on the availability of platform to operate and availability of market, i.e. buyer vs supplier.
However, consideration of market structure is not just about who is who in a marketplace, it is about understanding who the economic actors in key markets are, how dominant they are, how much value they add to the market, who access what they produce and how and on what terms. If we were to have such an analysis it would allow us to understand market relationships thus give our youth-owned businesses intentions of changing, subverting or where applicable, complementing already existing value chains, leading to the realization of industrial framework development.
But the issue isn’t all about the value chain, market structure considerations are also based on accessibility, that is the “who access what they produce” part of market structures. The YDF is based on rollout throughout the country, with many rural constituencies solely reliant on subnational support due to weak revenue bases, limited collection and limited capability to finance capital expenditure from their own resources. Fundamentally, we might assume that investment in local businesses will generate economic activity that will ultimately lead to improved infrastructure development through the private sector. However, this has not happened in recent years which then leads to what you may call the tragic chicken-egg scenario as limitations in infrastructure development will limit the scale of economic activity opportunities. What we fail to look into is that industrial framework that does not consider all considerations of market structures will fail to unlock local activity. I.e Mojaboswa Gaagake- A man known to be destined for good things likes to show it.
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