Alemayehu, Geda ( Dr.)Solomon, Mosisa Gofere2021-02-212023-11-042021-02-212023-11-042010-05http://etd.aau.edu.et/handle/123456789/25171The implications of the recent ADs' growth surge for the industrial development of African countries have been the subject of recent allention. The literature, however, focl/sed on the impact of ADs ' growing competitiveness in labor intensive manufactured goods on the industrial development strategy of the continent. This study, motivated by this bias in literature, explores whether the recent ADs' commodity demand boom significantly stimulated African countries to re-deepen their specialization in the production and export of traditional commodities. The study employed a non-parametric test of 'Galtonian regression method' to test the re-deepening specialization paltems of African countries. Then, the multi-country version of the HOV model is used to uncover the specialization patterns with the ADs' commodity imports and the Chinese FDI flows are used to augment the model. The non-parametric test shows that African countries are characterized by re-deepening specialization patterns with the exception of few countries and few sectors. While China's commodity imports are significantly locking African countries in the production and export of traditional commodities, China's FDI and India's commodity imports are not important in such patterns. Furthermore, the result indicates that the intensity of the impacts of China's commodity demand boom on the export structure of Africa varies across commodity groups and the indirect impacts are more significant than the impacts of direct bilateral commodity imports from African countries. This calls for innovative policy responses to China and the need to balance between the temporGlY resource windfall gain. and the future industrialization strategies of the continent.enexport, commodity demand boom, the Asian Drivers, export structure and system GMMThesis