Regionalism, end markets and ownership matter: Shifting dynamics in the apparel export industry in Sub Saharan Africa
通过分析撒哈拉以南非洲服装出口产业在贸易政策变化下的发展轨迹，揭示了所有权、终端市场和区域主义如何影响企业升级和市场转移，对理解该地区服装工业化路径有参考价值。
This paper shows the importance of ownership, end markets and regionalism within the global value chain and related conceptual frameworks. This is done through unpacking the development trajectories of the major Sub Saharan African apparel export industries against the backdrop of trade regime changes. Ownership characteristics of supplier firms shape the ability to shift between different end markets and respond to lead firm requirements; and the level of their local and regional embeddedness impacts on different forms of upgrading. The emergence of new regionalism centred around investment and end markets provides pathways for new trajectories of more sustainable value chains and local industrialization. More locally and regionally embedded firms have been able to shift with uneven success to new, and in particular regional, markets. In contrast, Asian-owned transnational producers remain focused on the US market with limited market opportunities and upgrading potential. Different types of ownership and embeddedness dynamics are therefore important to explain the co-evolution of highly differentiated value chain dynamics creating a variety of apparel industrialization trajectories in the apparel export industry in Sub Saharan African.