Although North African countries (NACs) post the best performance in SDG achievement among Africa’s subregions, significant challenges remain. This report assesses the state of play of NACs in attaining SDG9, which aims to build resilient infrastructure, promote sustainable industrialization and foster innovation. Several NACs are performing well on SDG 9, albeit with vast variations in levels of performance between countries. SDG 9 index shows that both Tunisia and Morocco are at the same level as the group of emerging industrial countries (EICs), Egypt also being close. This being said, the three countries are only nearly half the level of that of industrialized economies. Algeria, Libya, Mauritania and Sudan have a relatively smaller industrial sector. NACs have very low levels of inclusion and share of medium-high and high-tech manufacturing value added in total value-added compared with EICs. The manufacturing and modern services value-added must increase if NACs are to reach the per capita levels of industrialized nations. Redirecting public spending towards human capital will remain a central policy recommendation to improve innovation, technical capacity and sophistication of the countries’ manufacturing production structure.
