Linking Technology Development to Enterprise Growth: Evidence from the Mozambican Manufacturing Sector

This paper examines the relationship between firm-level technological development and enterprise performance in the Mozambican manufacturing sector. It does this on the basis of primary data collected for two industries - metalworking and light chemicals - and the triangulation of quantitative and qualitative information. Overall, the analysis presented in this paper only identifies a weak and, in some cases counterintuitive, association between levels of technological capability and innovation and enterprise performance. There are, however, some isolated exceptions to this finding, in which technology development has played a more decisive role in driving enterprise growth, such as the cluster of firms subcontracting work with the Mozal aluminium smelting plant. The case study of this cluster of firms allows the identification and illustration of conditions that might be required to facilitate a process of technology-led manufacturing growth.