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Industrialization constitutes one of the strategies of structural transformation in many sub‐Saharan African (SSA) countries. In this paper, we re‐examine the effect of financial development on the industrialization of 35 SSA countries over the period 1996–2018. Contrary to previous work, we formulate the hypothesis that there exists a threshold of financial development beyond which financial development positively influences industrialization. Using the dynamic panel threshold regression model, and system generalized methods of moment models, we find two main results. First, financial development has a negative and significant impact on the development of industrialization. Secondly, the findings show the existence of a nonlinear relationship between financial development and industrialization development. Thus, we find that financial development has a negative effect on industrialization below the threshold while the effect is significantly positive on industrialization in countries whose financial development is above the threshold. The results are stable to the different robustness tests used. These findings highlight the need for SSA countries to develop better financial institutions if they hope to boost the manufacturing sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]