Motoring Africa: Sustainable Automotive Industrialization

Building Entrepreneurs, Creating Jobs, and Driving the World’s Next Economic Miracle

Edward T. Hightower

<em>Motoring Africa</em> book cover
Hardcover: $27.95
eBook: $9.99

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Global business leaders looking for profitable growth and cost-effective access to new markets will want to read Motoring Africa. Local African business leaders looking to innovate and create new opportunities will want to read Motoring Africa. Local African government leaders looking to encourage investment and create jobs will want to read Motoring Africa.

During China’s period of automotive industrialization, from 1990 – 2015, the country went from building 500,000 cars per year to over 25 million cars per year, a 50-times increase! China’s GDP increased by 27-times during this same time period. Motoring Africa proposes that advancing value-added manufacturing of complex products, like automobiles, in six selected African countries, is a financially viable way to serve these markets, while creating large numbers of opportunities for entrepreneurs, investors, and job seekers.

Industrialization creates the conditions for efficient and profitable local manufacturing. Sustainable industrialization creates these conditions while maximizing the positive impact on the community and minimizing the negative impact on the environment. Sustainably industrializing automobile production has a job creation multiplier effect, given the 30,000 complex parts that must each be designed, engineered, and manufactured, by individual supplier companies, in order to create an automobile. Skills developed for the auto sector can be applied to other, less complex, consumer and industrial products.

Motoring Africa is a forward-looking, action-oriented book written from my perspective as an industry veteran. Throughout my career as an engineering and business leader in the global automotive industry, I have helped automakers succeed in China, India, South Korea, Brazil, and Mexico. I have personally seen how automotive industrialization has helped transform the economies and living standards in these markets.

  • “Hightower’s Motoring Africa: Sustainable Automotive Industrialization, is a must-read for investors, entrepreneurs, and policy makers serious about the continent’s long-term economic growth and competitiveness. Hightower’s analysis provides a compelling and timely path forward. It represents an actionable blueprint for the region by which to migrate up the economic value chain, and goes beyond the usual platitudes of development so often associated the continent. The book reflects Hightower’s decades of experience in engineering and manufacturing and his resolute passion for Africa and its citizens. His is a cogent, highly accessible and compelling read.”

    — E. LaBrent Chrite, PhD, Dean of the Daniels College of Business at the University of Denver, Denver, Colorado, USA
  • “I have personally been witness to the localization of India’s automobile sector in the last three decades and the transformation this has wrought on the local economy and skills base. Edward Hightower’s Motoring Africa offers a practical and highly doable 10-step blueprint for entrepreneurs in African nations to replicate this success. As an industry professional, Edward tackles core manufacturing issues such as indigenization, make versus buy, choice of cities, etc., by drawing on the global experiences of exemplar automobile makers. Anyone who thinks it’s time for Africa needs to read this book! And for those who think it’s not yet time, this reading will sharply alter your views too!”

    — Gopal Srinivasan, Chairman & Managing Director of TVS Capital Funds Limited; Chennai, India
  • Motoring Africa is an enlightening book written by a cross-continent auto veteran. It gives the reader a vivid understanding of automotive industrialization and its global economic impacts.”

    — William Wang, Board Member of Geely Automobile Holdings, Ltd.; and Founding Partner, Primavera Capital Group; Beijing, China
  • Motoring Africa makes a strong case for growing automobile and auto parts manufacturing on the African continent. It clearly outlines the many local entrepreneurial opportunities throughout the automaking value chain. Africa must move beyond imports, distribution, and kit assembly to true industrialization.”

    — Herman Chinery-Hesse, software engineer; affectionately known as the "Bill Gates of Africa;" co-founder and Chairman of TheSOFTtribe Limited; Accra, Ghana

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