The Industrial Investment Barometer in Africa

Informing and guiding productive transformation

Since the 2008 global financial crisis, industrial policy has undergone a profound resurgence worldwide. While the 1990s and 2000s saw the primacy of the market and the withdrawal of the productive state, the years following 2008 have witnessed a reaffirmation of the legitimacy of targeted public intervention. Recent work by the International Monetary Fund (Industrial Policy Since the Great Financial Crisis, Evenett et al., 2025) identifies more than 34,000 industrial interventions in 75 jurisdictions between 2009 and 2023, 85% of which were regulatory or selective in nature. This return of the « strategic state » now resonates at the heart of the policies of major powers – the United States, China, and the European Union – as well as emerging economies.