Professor Lindsay Whitfield

Prof Lindsay Whitfield is an Adjunct Professor at the Nelson Mandela School and  Professor of Business and Development and Co-Director of the Centre for Business and Development Studies in the Department of Management, Society and Communication at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. She is a political economist whose research focus on contemporary challenges to economic development. Her research combines theories within development economics with political science and economic history and emphasises  how processes of economic development take place within, and cannot be understood separate from, the global economy.

Research Interests: catch-up industrialisation in Sub-Saharan Africa; opportunities and challenges to greening industrialisation; apparel global value chains and the sustainability shift in apparel GVCs; apparel export industries in Africa, foreign direct investment from Asian first tier supplier firms, working conditions and how to leverage apparel and textile production for industrialisation.

 Journal Articles

• Industrial policy, local firm growth paths, and capability building in low-income countries: lessons from Ethiopia’s floriculture export sector, with Ayelech Melese, Industrial and Corporate Change, 2023.

• Leveraging participation in apparel global supply chains through green industrialization strategies: Implications for low-income countries, Ecological Economics, April 2022, 194, open access.

• ‘Local supplier firms in Madagascar’s apparel export industry: Upgrading paths, transnational social relations and regional production networks’, Lindsay Whitfield and Cornelia Staritz, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 2021 53(4): 763-784, open access.

• ‘The Learning Trap in Late Industrialization: Local Firms and Capability Building in Ethiopia’s Apparel Export Industry’, Lindsay Whitfield and Cornelia Staritz, Journal of Development Studies, 2021 57(6): 980-1000.

• ‘Technological Capabilities, Upgrading, and Value Capture in Global Value Chains: Local Apparel and Floriculture Firms in Sub-Saharan Africa’, Lindsay Whitfield, Cornelia Staritz, Ayelech Tiruwha Melese, Sameer Azizi, Economic Geography, 2020 96(3): 195-218, open access

 Working Papers

• Lindsay Whitfield; Kristoffer Marslev; Cornelia Staritz / Can Apparel Export Industries Catalyse Industrialisation? : Combining GVC Participation and Localisation. Pretoria : University of Johannesburg 2021, 53 p. (SARChI Industrial Development Working Paper Series)

• Tilman Altenburg; Xiao Chen; Wilfried Lütkenhorst; Cornelia Staritz; Lindsay Whitfield / Exporting out of China or out of Africa? : Automation versus Relocation in the Global Clothing Industry.Bonn : Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik 2020, 98 p. (Deutsches Institut fuer  Entwicklungspolitik. Discussion Paper)

 Research Reports

• Current Capabilities and Future Potential of African Textile & Apparel Value Chains: Focus on West Africa, CBDS Working Paper No. 2022/3, and CBDS policy brief

• Business Strategies of South African Textile Firms and Global Trends in 4IR and Sustainability Strategies, SARChI Industrial Development WP 2023-01, and Policy Brief

 Podcasts

• Business in Development podcast series - Centre of Business and Development Studies
• Business in Development blog posts - Centre of Business and Development Studies