The problem of industrialising was always organisational, in Europe just as much as Africa. If the rest of the world disappeared it would naturally develop over probably a couple centuries, since the process has started. The question for developing nations today is how to do it faster than that.
Yep. I'm not sure about Meiji Japan, but both the tiger economies and the Soviets did it by building on the existing European industrial economies. In the tiger's case, they bought easy to operate industrial machinery and ran it with cheap domestic labour for profitable export back to advanced economies, in Stalin's case he hired American contractors to build and train replica American factories in the USSR. After that, they could take the new resources and institutional experience and use it to build up to a next step.
The problem of industrialising was always organisational, in Europe just as much as Africa. If the rest of the world disappeared it would naturally develop over probably a couple centuries, since the process has started. The question for developing nations today is how to do it faster than that.
Some countries have demonstrated how it can be done much faster than Europe and the US did it.
Yep. I'm not sure about Meiji Japan, but both the tiger economies and the Soviets did it by building on the existing European industrial economies. In the tiger's case, they bought easy to operate industrial machinery and ran it with cheap domestic labour for profitable export back to advanced economies, in Stalin's case he hired American contractors to build and train replica American factories in the USSR. After that, they could take the new resources and institutional experience and use it to build up to a next step.