In a bid to foster the continent's industrialization, Sub-Saharan Africa launched industrial clusters or parks for channeling foreign know-how and capital and are bypassing the many obstacles of domestic business environments. Due to the high degree of failure experienced in many parts Africa, the China model of success story can serve as a case study of commitment top leadership, political goodwill, focused legal and regulatory framework, setting up favorable location advantages, tax breaks, duty-free imports of raw materials, export tax exemption, updated and modern technologies. It is also important African industrial development to build local manufacturing capacity, skilled people, including strengthening the concept of public-private partnership, but above all, investing in infrastructure.
TopDefinitions, Problem & Aims Of The Study
Industrial park concept has been defined in the literature in 19 different terms. The terms include Scientific Park, Technology Park, Research Park, Ecological Park or different combination of these all which form partnership between business, universities, research institutes as well as the civil society. Other associated terms are Industrial Estates, Industrial Districts, Export Processing Zones, Industrial Clusters, Business Parks, Office Parks, Science and Research Parks, Bio-Technology Parks as well as Eco-Industrial Parks.
All the terms above have variations and shades of meaning but the difference in terms surrounding Industrial Parks is not so much in meaning but in emphasis (Dodescu and Chirilă, 2012, UNCTC/ILO, 1986, Bost, 2010, FIAS, 2008, Cote & Cohen-Rosenthal, 1998). The common definition is taken to be a large tract of land sub-divided and developed for the use of several firms simultaneously with distinguishing characteristics being close proximity of firms and shareable infrastructure. Therefore, rather than taking the whole country, city or town for industrialization, industrial parks serve as prototypes or examples of places for industrialization.
Akinci (2004) points out how different geographical locations prefer to use different terminologies as shown in the table below. However, the term Industrial Parks will be used throughout this paper.
Table 1.
Industrial Parks shades of names used in different countries
| 1 | Maquiladora | Costa Rica, Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama |
| 2 | Free Zones | Costa Rica, Honduras, Ireland, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, Venezuela |
| 3 | Special Economic Zones (SEZ)
/Cluster concept | China |
| 4 | Industrial Free Zones | Cameroon, Colombia, Ghana, Madagascar, Syrian Arab Republic, Jordan |
| 5 | Free Trade Zones (FTZ) | Bulgaria, Chile, Egypt |
| 6 | Export Free Zones | Jamaica |
| 7 | Free trade/industrial zones | Islamic Republic of Iran |
| 8 | Export Processing Free Zones | Togo |
| 9 | Special Export Processing Free Zones | Philippines |
| 10 | Tax Free Factories | Fiji |
| 11 | Bonded Zones | Indonesia |
| 12 | Free Economic Zones | Russian Federation |
| 13 | Industrial Estates | Thailand |
| 14 | Points Francs (special Industrial Free Zones) | Cameroon |
| 15 | Industrial Free zones for goods and services | Colombia |