Human Capital, Structural Transformation, and the Productivity Puzzle in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Structured Narrative

AlterEconomics (ранее - Журнал экономической теории). 2026. Vol. ECONOMICS JOURNAL 23(3), 2026. No. ECONOMICS JOURNAL 23(3), 2026.

Аджибола А. Б.

Education has expanded rapidly in Sub-Saharan Africa, yet productivity growth, formal employment and sectoral growth remain uneven. This divergence motivates a structured narrative review of why a growing stock of human capital has not translated consistently into structural transformation across the region. Drawing on 113 formal-corpus sources selected through structured searches and a documented curated pool, this review argues that the puzzle reflects three interconnected dimensions of structural absorption, understood here as an economy's capacity to convert skills into higher-productivity employment. First, labour reallocation has flowed disproportionately toward services that generate static, one-time productivity gains rather than the sustained gains historically associated with manufacturing, so schooling contributes more consistently where it produces usable skills matched to activities that reward them. Second, demographic momentum raises job-creation requirements faster than skill-intensive labour demand expands, reducing access to salaried employment for larger cohorts and intensifying pressure on labour absorption. Third, historically rooted institutional differences continue to shape the distribution of human capital and productive activity, while firm-level evidence shows that rising productivity does not translate uniformly into employment growth. These dimensions interact differently across subregions and help explain why renewed industrialisation in some economies coexists with persistent informality, premature deindustrialisation elsewhere and uneven productivity convergence. The findings support policies that connect education reform with productive job creation, firm upgrading and region-specific transformation strategies.

Keywords: человеческий капитал, сфера услуг, productivity, производительность, demographic transition, демографический переход, structural transformation, структурная трансформация, Services, Sub-Saharan Africa, Human capital, преждевременная деиндустриализация, labour absorption, premature deindustrialisation, поглощение рабочей силы, страны Африки к югу от Сахары