The Role of Exports for Income and Job Creation in Sub-Saharan African Countries: New Evidence using the Africa Supply and Use Tables Database

This paper is number 197 in the Groningen Growth and Development's Research Memoranda series. Abstract This paper examines the role of exports for income and job creation in sub-Saharan African countries. It introduces the Africa Supply and Use Tables (ASUT) database, which provides annual data on the production structure of eleven countries from 1990 to 2019. For each country, official supply and use tables are benchmarked to national accounts and trade data that reflect production and usage by 20 sectors. Using input-output techniques, we document five key stylized facts: i) African economies face increased international competition, during a period in which the production process has been further fragmented; ii) An increasing share of domestic value-added exports (income content of exports) comes from manufacturing and services; iii) The income content of exports is becoming increasingly diversified, especially between 1990 and 2007, but continuing albeit at a slower pace from 2007 to 2019; iv) A rising number of manufacturing jobs are sustained by exports, increasing from 4.1 million workers in 1990 to 8.6 million workers by 2019; v) Inter-industry linkages are expanding, where the rising linkages are particularly observed in services sectors. The dataset is hosted separately on Dataverse and can be accessed through: Africa Supply and Use Tables (ASUT) Database DOI: 10.34894/IMKXNT