Industrial policy fails when it ignores the politics of anticipation

Across the world, industrial policy is back. Governments are picking sectors, subsidising technologies and reshaping markets in the name of resilience, decarbonisation and competitiveness. Africa is no exception. From green industrial strategies to mineral beneficiation plans, the language of transformation is everywhere.

And yet, failure is common.

Industrial policy is often blamed when outcomes disappoint: weak implementation, investor resistance, social backlash or policy reversal. The usual diagnosis follows—capacity constraints, poor coordination, weak institutions. But this misses a deeper problem.

Industrial policy fails not because states cannot implement it, but because they ignore how futures are negotiated long before they are implemented.

 The hidden stage where policy succeeds or dies

Most industrial policies are treated as technical exercises. Analysts debate incentives, tariffs, local content rules and financing instruments. Politics enters late, usually as a constraint to be “managed”.

In reality, politics comes first.

Before a single subsidy is granted or factory built, industrial futures are already being debated, framed and stabilised. Investors decide what is “bankable”. Experts define what is “viable”. Consultants model which pathways are “realistic”. Communities judge whether promises are credible. Elites weigh rents against risk.

This phase is rarely acknowledged, yet it is decisive. By the time policy is formally announced, much of the future has already been agreed—or quietly foreclosed.

 

Anticipation is not neutral

At the heart of this process is anticipation: shared expectations about what will happen, what must happen and what cannot happen.

These expectations are not neutral forecasts. They are socially co-produced through interactions between governments, firms, financiers, experts and citizens. They reflect power, interests and authority.

When an investor insists that local processing is “premature”, when a feasibility study declares a sector “uncompetitive”, when a financier demands speed to capture a “narrow window”, these are not technical facts. They are political claims about the future.

Accept them, and policy space narrows. Contest them, and new options remain open.

 

Why Africa’s industrial ambitions keep stalling

This helps explain why industrial policy in Africa so often underperforms.

Governments announce ambitious strategies—green value chains, mineral processing, manufacturing hubs—yet implementation falters. The problem is not that these strategies are badly designed. It is that they enter a political economy where futures have already been negotiated elsewhere.

In extractives, for example, industrial policy confronts long-term offtake agreements, externally defined standards and financing models that privilege rapid export. By the time beneficiation policies are introduced, the economic logic of extraction is already locked in.

Industrial policy then appears unrealistic, interventionist or “too late”. In truth, it arrived after the decisive anticipatory battles were lost.

The myth of sequencing

Policy debates often assume a clean sequence: first vision, then policy, then implementation. Reality is messier.

Anticipation collapses this sequence. Futures are negotiated before policy, during policy and through policy instruments themselves. Contracts, standards and studies are not neutral tools; they are vehicles through which particular futures gain authority.

Ignore this, and industrial policy becomes an exercise in managing consequences rather than shaping trajectories.

Why technical fixes are not enough

This is why better coordination units, stronger delivery teams or smarter incentives are rarely sufficient. They operate downstream of a process that has already distributed power.

Industrial policy requires not only administrative capacity, but anticipatory capacity: the ability to recognise when futures are being defined, by whom, and with what assumptions.

Without this, states find themselves implementing policies they did not fully choose, defending futures they did not author and absorbing risks they did not negotiate.

Bringing politics back upstream

What would a different approach look like?

First, governments would treat anticipation as a political arena, not a technical prelude. Scenario building, feasibility studies and transition pathways would be sites of contestation, not outsourced conclusions.

Second, industrial policy would be framed earlier—before contracts and standards harden expectations. The goal would not be to eliminate uncertainty, but to keep it governable long enough to preserve choice.

Third, states would invest in collective capacities to debate futures publicly and credibly, so that industrial ambitions are socially anchored before costs appear.

The real lesson for policymakers

The core lesson is simple but uncomfortable: industrial policy is never implemented on a blank slate. It is enacted within futures that have already been partially agreed.

Ignore that, and even well-designed policies will disappoint. Recognise it, and industrial policy becomes something else—not just a toolkit, but a struggle over whose expectations shape the economy.

In the end, the success of industrial policy depends less on how efficiently it is delivered than on whether states are willing to engage the politics of anticipation head-on.

Because in the modern economy, the future is not just built.
It is negotiated.