On 1 July 2016, the government of Zimbabwe gazetted Statutory Instrument 64 of 2016 (SI 64/2016), aimed at boosting domestic industrial production through the protection of local industries from unfair competition from foreign firms. However, Zimbabwe’s neighbours, in particular Zambia and South Africa, formally complained to the Southern African Development Community (SADC). They claimed that SI 64/2016 adversely affected their economies and violated the SADC Protocol on Trade, which promotes free trade among member countries. The two countries further argued that Zimbabwe’s introduction of the statutory instrument was unilateral and unprocedural because, for instance, ‘the Government of Zimbabwe was supposed to approach the SADC Committee of Ministers Responsible for Trade to justify its promulgation before implementation’. The rationale was that Zimbabwe, as a member of the World Trade Organization, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, Economic Partnership Agreements, and the SADC, was bound by the various trade agreements of these organisations and, therefore, had an obligation to adhere to their terms and conditions.

Around the same time, in 2016, the East African Community (EAC), comprising Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and Burundi, adopted a phased ban on the importation of used clothing over three years. Just like Zimbabwe, the EAC intended to protect its domestic textile industry because the second-hand clothing imports, estimated at roughly USD 151 million in 2015, stifled the local sector. The proposed ban alarmed the Secondary Materials and Recycled Textiles Association (SMART), an association of United States (US)-based used clothing exporters. They sought the intervention of the US Trade Representative (USTR). The USTR responded by evoking ‘an out-of-cycle review of AGOA privileges’, which would result in the revocation of ‘preferential market access’ for the EAC’s textile exports to the USA. Against the backdrop of this threat, within two years all EAC states except Rwanda had reversed their decision.

The two cases of Zimbabwe and the EAC brought to the fore the globalism, imperialism, inequality, and state–capital relations associated with African industrial policy as it strives to achieve meaningful industrialisation. Examining industrial policy is even timely, as the topic has also become resurgent after a lapse of almost three decades.