Leather and textile industries-strategic sectors for Ethiopia to gain capability of manufacturing for global market competitiveness: A literature review

Abstract

Leather and textile industries have a vital role of transforming countries into industrialization-manufacturing led economy. There has been a focus on these industries in Ethiopia to bring manufacturing capability which can be scaled up in the future to produce other value-added products for global markets. However, there is lack of organized scientific information about the actions taken by the government to develop the industries, what the achievements are, and the challenges of the medium and large-scale manufacturing firms in the leather and textile industries. Therefore, the objective of this paper was to synthesize the available scientific and other reliable information by employing a qualitative systematic review method and come up with a new insight. Guided by the thematic literature synthesizing technique, this paper found that the medium and large- scale manufacturing firms in the leather and textile industries have penetrated the global market by improving the quality of products and increasing the quantity of production, although they have faced severe challenges to operate as per their design capacity mainly due to problems related to inputs. The paper presents the strategies implemented to stimulate the manufacture of leather and textile products, the performance improvement practices, the achievements, and challenges of the manufacturing firms in the leather and textile industries. Besides, it identified the existing gaps and the future lines of work.