This paper models the evolution and determinants of the shares of agricultural, manufacturing and services sectors’ value added for 53 African countries for 1970-2014 years.

A number of alternative estimation techniques were used. These included pooled OLS with clustered standard errors, quantile regressions and panel data techniques. However, the quantile regressions do not provide much additional traction over and above the OLS estimates.

There are large gaps in the data for many countries for several variables. Policy conclusions are derived from the viewpoint of increasing the shares of the services and, particularly, the manufacturing sector in value added.