Posted
on November 20, 2015
 |
| As people work to industrialize many African nations, hopefully they will strive to create environmentally-sound factories with good working conditions. |
Ever
since 1990, November 20 has been a day to focus on ways to stimulate
Africa's industrialization.
Africa
is a large continent, and each region and nation has its own
strengths and challenges. So when I say something like, “Africa
has...” or “Africa does not...” – I'm obviously speaking of
general patterns of strengths and challenges. Please do not take it
as descriptive of each and every nation.
Okay,
here are two generalizations:
- Africa has many natural resources, including mineral resources, biological diversity, and land area.
- However, Africa's lack of industrialization in many places and industries means that it still struggles with joblessness and poverty.
And here
are two examples of my two generalizations, given by Lawrence Mbae in a March, 2014, article:
(1) Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, between the two nations, produce more than half of the world's cocoa. However, if you check the supermarket shelves in those two nations, the chocolates people buy are imported from Switzerland and the U.K and other nations that do not grow cocoa!
(2) Nigeria is the world's sixth largest producer of crude oil. It exports more than 80% of its oil – but it cannot refine enough for its own use, and so it must import refined fuels from other nations.
In
both cases, someone is making money selling Africa's raw resources,
and someone is making money transporting Africa's resources to highly
industrialized nations, and of course someone is making money
producing and selling consumer products from those materials. Most
depressing, perhaps, is that someone is making money transporting
these consumer goods back to Africa and selling them to Africans.
Am
I being to cynical to suppose that even the first two of the links in
this chain may be, in many instances, European and North American
companies?
Let's
go back to our first generalization: Africa is rich in resources. As a
continent, it has 12% of the world's oil reserves, 40% of its gold,
60% of underused arable land (arable
means “suitable fro growing crops”), 65% of the world's diamonds, between 80 and 90% of its chromium and platinum.
The
fact that only about 1% of the world's manufacturing occurs in Africa
shows that there is a huge opportunity for growth. If factories were
built in Africa, hopefully mostly by Africans, that would create many jobs for local populations. Africa would benefit by
producing the locally needed manufactured goods and by exporting
manufactured goods as well as raw resources.
One
thing that prevents such a wonderful thing is that many African
nations are unstable and are therefore risky places for investment. It is
crucial that these nations become more democratic, less violent, more
stable – places where people can generally count on the rule of law
– and obviously for more reasons than for industrialization! If
more nations can become as stable and prosperous as Botswana, there
would be much more happiness in the world!
Also
on this date:
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