1. Mineral Resources. 2. Cheap Labour. 3. High Density of Lanthanide and Actinide group minerals.
China also has a fourth advantage which is a good mix of Production, Manufacturing and Electronics Engineers. Which Africa doesn't have. On the other hand India doesn't have the raw mineral resources required to do long term manufacturing. For instance India doesn't have the ideal coal quality to produce steel, India imports 90% of its Anthracite from Australia.
So the ideal situation in my view would be to setup manufacturing hub in African countries. Hire Chinese/Indian/American/Russian manufacturing Engineers and the rich mineral resources in African countries. This would fuel the growth of the world for next few decades. Though one thing to notice African countries may or may not have the rare earth metals but the probability if explored is quite high.
That is one thing that is holding even India back. In democratic setup it is very difficult to take a long term view particularly when that comes with short term pain - the govt would be out in next election.
Africa should learn both from countries like China, Singapore and also from countries like India.
Otherwise I do agree that Africa is well placed to be the next manufacturing hub due to its cheap labor, mineral resources, coastlines etc.
The one thing you can count India on is that democracy will prevail.
Any government which comes to power will always appease industrialists and investors albeit their electioneering manifesto may have been on the upliftment of the proletariat and bourgeois
What do you mean, become autocratic/centralized/...or whatever other word you want to choose. That's a quick one way ticket to getting invaded and thrown out by the US government.
Or is that only when the US is tsk tsking about how other countries treats its citizens....
The US government has no problems with autocratic governments, in fact they have propped many in the past. No, if you don't agree with them in economic terms they will invade. And there are plenty of excuses to go around, not that anyone cares anymore really. Iraq was supposed to have chemical weapons and everyone disliked Bush for that, but with Obama the US is at war in multiple countries with no visible excuse.
Wow, neocolonialism much? This sort of extractive thinking is exactly the reason that countries in Africa remain some of the poorest in the world. Which companies do you think will be bringing in these foreign workers? Do you expect them to settle there?
How many counties can you name for whom bringing large numbers of foreign knowledge workers worked to build up a a strong manufacturing core (apart from maybe operation paper clip [1])?
Some might remember most of their chips and RAM having "Made in Malaysia" on them through the 90/00's, all from one little area.
But the country squandered the opportunity due to racial divides and the federal government's dislike of the Chinese-Malay majority on the island, a place that very much resembled Singapore's demographics and ironically tried to secede at the same time but was shot down due to the Malaysian government considering it vitally important unlike Singapore (who then went from the one of the poorest countries on Earth to the richest despite absolutely no natural resources), the years after weren't much better, they never really ever wanted it to succeed too much and consistently denied appropriate amounts of federal funding despite the population levels.
It's one of the few states in the country where a leader who isn't ethnic-Malay is legally allowed to get the job. Many don't like this situation as Malay supremacy is written into the constitution and is still deeply engrained into the national psyche. An Indian or Chinese leader makes many uncomfortable.
Fast forward a few decades and there's still a reasonable contingent of manufacturing around but advanced fabs have long left, somewhat surprisingly to more expensive shores like Taiwan, SK and China, nowadays some silicon is made elsewhere and shipped into Malaysia for assembly despite the vast amount of infrastructure, foreign skillsets and supply chains built up over 30 years. At one point long ago one third of all of the exports out of the country was cpus. Quite impressive for a SE Asian country with a large amount of natural resources.
Sandisk and some other storage manufacturers are still around but there's the feeling the island never got to see it's full potential and was never capitalized on.
The government tried to replicate this recently in a more "Malay friendly" province 20km outside of KL renamed as Cyberjaya (literally cybersuccess). It's widely mocked as a failure across the political spectrum to this day, it only ended up housing some DC's utilizing cheap coal fired power in a tropical climate and some international call centers despite huge amounts of government subsidies trying to lure in innovation.
Singapore. If you expand your criteria for success a bit to 'advanced economy', many countries have utilized foreign labor to great effect. Saudi Arabia, Dubai and other Middle Eastern states saw signficant economic development, and the emergence of large export industries, utilizing foreign labor.
Caribbean states with economies centered around finance and tourism, and at least one African state, Botswana, with its mining industry, did the same.
I can see how population density would be a huge factor when it comes to how feasible it is to establish and develop these networks.
Prime Minister Modi has spoken about it in his address to the nation.
However, they cannot produce everything all by themselves. Partly because of mineral resources, partly because of education and partly because of land crunch.
Which means, when they industrialize more, they need to import more.
Which aids growth of countries exporting to India.
USA used to play that role until recently but cannot take it anymore for various political and non-political reasons. If anything, most of the developed world should be very happy that India is developing the way it is because it aids their own industries.
African countries will get there some day as well, but they would do much much better by having a unified bloc like EU.
Also cheap labour doesn't mean cheap in the overall sense. You would have to hire international workers at much higher rate, eg Emirates pays twice to pilots compared to US salaries. Also logistics of other parts will be more expensive. India is just on the verge of crossing the barrier where you could mostly do with local talent and local logistics. Africa is far from crossing that barrier.
Africa is the last place any electronics are going to be made, and it's completely unsuitable to their situation, at least currently.
Manufacturing any kind of electronics any scale requires a fair bit of sophistication. There is a lot of know how in putting together lines, knowing what to optimise, managing supply chains.
I just got some quotes from various parties, they all had to have intimate, Engineering level understanding of the system, they all switched out parts, recommended alterations. They sometimes use expensive gear. Factories in China have labour, but they also have educated professionals.
They rely on an entire system of sub-contractors, suppliers etc.
Even before you get to that, in Africa you have:
- The electricity grid is inconsistent. - Basic things like water supply, air conditioning systems, HVAC is inconsistent, let alone trying to support a proper clean room. - Vehicle repair and maintenance can be hard. - Internet is inconsistent - Financial system is not fully coherent, financial services for many things don't exist. - Physical infrastructure (roads, buildings) is iffy everywhere. - Huge amounts of petty theft: things left unlocked will be stolen. - Massive corruption, payments to local grafters, police, politicians. - Political climate is unstable, politicians may promise something, never happens, want a 'cut' of your business. - Legal system undeveloped, lacking in transparency, commercial courts no well understood. - Many apps and services we take for granted don't operate in Africa.
Forget the elevated level of knowledge required to staff the front-office of a real factory. Even if you could, the concept of 'employment' and 'basic level of professionalism' is not widespread. Get people to show up consistently, get them to work together, plan complicated products, communicate with individuals in a variety of nations.
Bono started a clothing line to specifically have stuff made in Africa, but even that basic textile effort did not work.
The Chinese invest in African for minerals etc. they bring in their own workers (why do they do this if African wages are lower?).
Africa is mostly very underdeveloped right across the board in the terms we understand it. They're not at the level necessary to take on basic manufacturing. Their hope will be to develop natural resources in an intelligent way, like Botswana as a great example.
I think Vietnam, Philipenes, eventually Malaysia are more likely suited for electronics manufacturing, especially because it's going to be driven by Chinese leadership. Same for India: Foxconn maybe can pull it off, because they have expansive operational knowledge, there are educated people in India even if they can't fathom yet how to do that level of work and systems are not suited to it. India does very well in software - partly because it doesn't require expansive networks or an 'industrial base', it can grow up from 'small spots' of talent, with limited dependency on the environs. You can still have a 'great software shop' surrounded by corruption and degrees of dysfunction, you can't build electronics manufacturing base like this.
Here is some data on African manufacturing [1], notice it's fairly low level stuff: plastics, beverage, chemicals, food processing etc..
[1] https://set.odi.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Export-Based-...
The Chinese invest in African (sic) for minerals etc.
they bring in their own workers (why do they do this if
African wages are lower?).
There's a most excellent documentary on the inroads the Chinese have industrially made in Africa called Empire of Dust (2011)[1] thats eminently watchable.[2][3][4]
Even going back a decade and more, the Chinese not only brought their own machinery, trucks, heavy and light equipment of all kinds down to nuts and bolts but also their own manpower for everything but the most menial of tasks for which they employed the local populace. This shows how unreliable or qualifiedly unworthy the Chinese deemed the skilled population in their host countries & how inefficient local governments were in furnishing them with basic skills.
[1]
Empire of Dust (2011)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2148945/
[2]
EMPIRE OF DUST - TRAILER
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkEqI3_J4xg
[3]
Empire of Dust China in Africa Mirror
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LSuZGlqL34
[4]
It's all so....tiresome.
Anyway - Africa will be developed after Asia is exhausted. It will take longer, but it will happen within a few decades.
As such there is an enormous range to all of your points, which, with few exceptions, are sufficiently local to make your comment meaningless.
It would be the same as sweeping generalisations about the USA that equated new York, ohio, texas and Montana as all being the same place.
It requires good government, good laws, good enforcement of laws, good infrastructure, good stability and much more.
Other countries had this too and the made the necessary changes.
Some African nations did a good job many did not. Once they do they will see similar growth to East Asian countries or other.
"Other issues you mentioned such as electricity and water are the reason why you will find some of the most innovative people out there. Rather than complain about their inconvenient lack of opportunities, they think outside the box to achieve whatever they want to achieve."
I get it - if you don't have consistent electricity you 'innovate' and I admire that a lot. But I'm sorry - you're going to need consistent electricity to do many things. It's not a 'complaint'.
There's just no way around having basic infrastructure. Also - consider that a nation that cannot get consistent electricity obviously has some deep problems. So it's partly the 'lack of electricity' - but really, it's the 'problems that cause a nation to not be able to have electricity' - those are the real underlying problems.
That said, nowhere in East Africa is going to be making electronics in any capacity any time soon.
You should also consider thy on earth you would want to do that, as it's not really a natural advantage.
I live in Canada - and we don't make many electronics either! Because it's not suited to us.
Does your President/Prime Minister have political control of the Central Bank, and the large National banks, and can he use it to make massive strategic investments in certain technologies and use it for export financing?
Do you have an attractive enough economy that you can lure international investors, and then force them to hand over their IP? Do you have the depth of Engineering talent to take the plans for an advanced European rail system, copy them, make your own train system?
Do you have a malleable a population of professionals willing to work cheap, to be servile to others and say 'yes, yes, yes' no matter what, work 7 days a week and get it done no matter what? Those are strong words, but that's China for the last 30 years, working with them, they always say 'Yes', it's always cheap, and they move extremely quickly. The results are something else to talk about, but they have a very specific kind of attitude towards work, that for better or worse, works for them. They have a strong sense of nationalist vigour like right out of the 1950's.
So if you can't have enough foundational sophisticate to do electricity, let alone those things, then as you say, with an innovative attitude you can just do something other than electronics.
Much higher value and branded goods along the lines of what Africa is doing already, i.e. going 'up market' at least on some things. Exotic produce, processed, textiles, definitely tourism and of course agriculture, probably specialised.
Think of the economy like a pyramid. If you want to build higher, you have to have a wider, and more solid base. It would be a much higher ROI for any nation to establish competent civics (ie 'base') that it would to try to develop advanced foundries.
Last note: the elite in Africa is a problem, moreover, there is no 'professional class' of owners, artisans ie tradition of highly competent people doing complicated, industrious things handing down from generation to generation. Surely there was some of this, it's just adaptable to our current version of globalism.
China has had an established bureaucracy for thousands of years. So has Europe. Africa and 'mostly' South America have not, and that is the 'social pyramid' (of competency, not just power) which is necessary as well. Though there are some obvious things about that people find unfair, it's just as unavoidable.
Bring manufacturing to Africa would really help grow world economy and would also end this current trade war. It may not be easy but it is possible. Africa has the cheapest labour you can find anywhere, hardworking people with strong sense of confidence. Africa is closer to Europe and America than China and India. Africa has strong cultural ties already with Europe and America.
Banking services develop along with businesses, and as the economy improves every sector would improve too. China was not built over night.
However, in reality, barring these colonial era 'Macaulay's children' (ala ICS officers who swore by the Queen} India and Africa actually have very similar development indicators.
Unless, India sorts out its colonized education system, which ultimately is geared more towards shipping labor off to other countries, and focuses on policy reforms to make industrialization sustainable without paying politicians hundreds of millions in bribes, there's actually a good chance that it'll fall behind Africa as well.
This is the first time I heard this. Source that this is/was important? If it is, why not Brazil?
"2. Cheap Labour."
I am not sure that African countries are so much cheaper than India. Also, you need educated people too, something that is not available in Africa, at least not in quantities.
3. High Density of Lanthanide and Actinide group minerals.
Why is this necessary? Source?
China has:
1. Very educated people (most communist countries had the highest literacy rate)
2. A very supportive government
3. A huge market with the necessary infrastructure, starting from Universities, Airports, roads, trains...
4. Clustering of industries.
The phenomenon of China can not easily be repeated. It is nearly impossible in Africa:
1. Uneducated people
2. Tribal societies
3. Corrupt governments
4. Lack of infrastructure
Look at a map. If it is a "non-integrating gap country", it won't be the next China.
More than my answers I think you need this http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
Once you learn that google is one step away to find the answers to your questions.
[1] https://www.hospitalmanagement.net/comment/anemia-prevalence...
[2] https://www.indiaspend.com/38-of-indian-children-under-4-poo...
It seems to me that in the future, economic value will be correlated with the ability to work with increasingly abstract things (which I assume IQ is trying to measure).
Wouldn't the natural tendency to value human worth based on their IQ? Of course not, you might say. But imagine there's some future with a permanent underclass of lower IQ people, subsidized by very high marginal tax rates / UBI. I can see our human nature justify some sort of social Darwinist policies.
Edit: what a weird tangent this thread has taken.
If we keep improving AI at current rates, two things can happen at the same time:
1. The cost of running a full-brain simulation puts an upper limit on someone’s IQ-based pay — cost of power vs salary. This is something I would equate to slavery; I don’t like it, yet I expect it to happen.
2. Fully-synthetic AGI with little to no biological duplication (more like AlphaZero then Blue Brain) is probably going to equal the performance of low-IQ humans before high-IQ humans, and if it can do that for less than the cost of 2000 kcal/day then low-IQ humans can only be employed for non-intelligence-based tasks.
But that might just mean we mostly revert to manual labour jobs. I can’t forecast this — I’m not a psychologist, I don’t grok politics, and I am aware that I don’t think the way normal people think.
We'd usually hire someone that meets the various quota laws then a foreign contractor to do that full time persons job. This was not the original intention and we often reviewed hiring practices etc to ensure the local person was good enough but God damn.... What an 'interesting' labour market.
Africa however will be much more difficult as a whole. But there are individual countries that will maybe be able to benefit from it some day.
For now, it's more lucrative in most cases to "receive aid" instead of "produce things". In that sense, "aid" has similar effects as natural recourses have.
I really think we have to move to a Commons-based peer production paradigm. Ask yourself, would I want to work for Foxconn assembling $1k iPhones for meager pay? [1] And I am not asking you from a hypothetical standpoint where you pretend to be an Indian in the context of the country India. My question is: would you accept a job starting work at Foxconn today, in the place where you are living?
If not, why not?
I believe the Precariat revolt is imminent.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/18/foxconn-l...
References article about event 10 years ago.
It means that you are in the dying Salariat class.
“At the top are a plutocracy and an elite, earning rentier incomes and wielding enormous political power. Way below them, in income terms, is a salariat, a shrinking group with employment security and an extensive array of non-wage enterprise benefits such as pensions, paid holidays and medical leave.“ [1]
You write:
> I will also not work in fields growing crops, neither in a call center, not even in a software service company paying me meagre ₹35 lakh/a
Guy Standing’s got you:
“If you are in the precariat and become unemployed, and manage to obtain benefits, you face a marginal tax rate of over 80% in taking the sort of low-wage job you are likely to be offered. It may be over 100%. Then you are called rude names if you decline to take such jobs. No member of the salariat would get out of bed if faced by such tax rates, except perhaps to take to the streets to protest. But that is what politicians have forced on the precariat.“ [2]
Your comment makes sense and your view from this privileged position is common for the Salariat.
If you’re interested to explore further, I love Guy’s work in ‘Plunder of the Commons‘, as well as ‘The Corruption of Capitalism: Why Rentiers Thrive and Work Doesn’t Pay’. Looking at the future, the most compassionate vision I’ve found is described (separately) by Kevin Carson, Arthur Brock and Eric Harris-Braun. They describe an open source world through Commons-based peer production. Together with Holochain currencies (mutual credit and reputation currencies [Ceptr.org]), these things make me feel incredibly inspired and hopeful.
[1][2] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/precariat-global-clas...
Let's be real about those negatives.
It seems as though it's always just the next country in line taking it's turn to provide subsistence-wage labor. The likes of Steve Pinker may argue that living standards continue to trend upwards across the board, but it seems like people are just becoming more and more time-poor (happy to be proven wrong on this point).
If we follow this pattern, once every country has lifted itself up by the bootstraps, the end-game would not be some poorer nations providing the subsistence-wage labor, but the poor population of each country providing subsistence-wage labor. Their living standards might be much higher, but they will pay in hours, or having to give up freedoms, like living on-site at Foxxcon. Why? Because those holding power have the upper hand, and would hardly be motivated to cede their power. Replace power with capital if you want. The only possible countervailing force being collective action, say in the force of democratic institutions, and a socially-minded polity.
But eventually, automation will outcompete everyone... at this point we're then forced to resort to either welfare or artificial means of population control. It seems more humane to consider policy on population and welfare sooner rather than later, but that's just my humblest of opinions.
EDIT: Cowards who downvoted me, might you refute any of my points?
Hours per day Americans spent on leisure and sports is not trending down: https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/TUU10101AA01013585
On average it's higher now than in the early 2000s (annual survey begins in 2003). Source: https://www.bls.gov/tus/ ("ATUS Tables")
I see also this, in wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#Trends_over_time
It's probable that the hours have just displaced to poorer countries. Presumably the BLS data, nor the wiki graphic, have data that includes developing and underdeveloped nations.
Edit: I found a book on the topic for anyone interested
https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/@dgreports/@dcomm/@...
Edit: Page 44 in the above link shows an increase in working hours in the US (note that the 4 of the 5 other western countries compared have continued to trend down, but also have strong social welfare and working policy)
(Note that it's not clear if decreases in worked hours are actually desirable. Some people believe many part-timers would want to work more if they could.)
India - significant increase https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AVHWPEINA065NRUG https://tradingeconomics.com/india/unemployment-rate
Brazil - significant drop https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AVHWPEBRA065NRUG https://tradingeconomics.com/brazil/unemployment-rate
more hours worked = slavery
less hours worked = underemployment
Are there any measures at all that would convince you that the overall the world is better than it used to be?
I made a post above that addresses your plaint I believe. I'm not being disingenuous here, I'm trying to make sense of the data. Obviously hours worked (on average), is not separable from employment figures.
> Are there any measures at all that would convince you that the overall the world is better than it used to be?
I think it's troublesome to look at economic indicators alone and make a hedonic judgement. Because when someone says, 'The world is better', I immediately think they are saying, people are 'happier'. Globalisation and technological advancement have increased the world population, as well as per-capita quality of life, and GDP. So perhaps in that 'positive-utilitarian' sense, the world is better in aggregate.
However, let's take the Chinese. They have bided their time, and now have a quality of life far exceeding their forebears. However, they can now ask for higher wages, and the value of the currency has increased, and they were losing the lower-end of the manufacturing market.. so the government found a population they could put to work for nothing - I'm sure you know what I'm talking about here.
Currently I don't see incentives for these low substinence-wage jobs going away, so I don't see how data about per-capita improvements make the reality of sweat-shops disappear. If I could see global policy shifting towards the direction of human rights, and meaningful enforcement of those human rights, that would convince me the world hasn't just reached a plateau, but can actually uplift the very bottom rung of the population.
EDIT: If there was one measure that would convince me, it would be a trend in reduction in forced-labour and sustenance-wage labour. But I couldn't find data that captures this quantity changing over time, as it's not something that could be easily surveyed, or would likely be under-reported.
As I've said in my original post, this just means that labor force is now sourced from another country. Subsistence wages are just the minimum you can possibly pay someone, and I don't see how this will stop being a thing unless governments across the board make it so. Happy to be proven wrong about this.
This is a phenomenon that is happening right now, today. It's effectively the same as slavery... I'm not saying 'it used to be better', but I'm not buying the line that globalisation has removed people from being 'overworked', or being effectively slaves. Nor do I believe it ever could, without some form of government intervention.
The simple truth is, if there's a place in the world where it is possible to pay someone only to work, and nothing else, there will be a company willing to exploit that, and there will always be a country willing to exploit its population to get an economic leg-up. Even the most high-minded bleeding-heart left liberals are still unwilling to pay a few bucks extra for something that is manufactured on 'living wages'.
that place is _everywhere_ on planet earth. Calling the need for somebody to work 'effective slavery' is wrong. Slavery is involuntary. work is voluntary.
A distinction can be drawn between someone who has the benefit of a wage where they can save money, and without. If the options are, work somewhere that pays just enough to live, or perish - it's not really an option.
Let's say that someone who, in an alternate universe would have the aptitude to work as a Software Engineer in Silicon Valley, happened to be born in the poorest province in a developing nation, and the only options available were work day and night, with enough pay for food and lodging, no internet access. Is that the same as someone born in Europe, has public education, access to the internet, uses the library, becomes a developer, gets hired by FAANG... etc?
You're not going to solve sweatshops by taking away people's agency. You get rid of them by providing viable alternatives.
This seems to be ignoring reality. If you're born in a locality without options to grow your own food, or don't have a farm to inherit, these aren't actually options.
And actually, a lot of poor people have been forced off their lands, when lucrative commercial interests have swayed law-makers and bureaucrats. Property rights aren't quite the same in poorer countries.
> You're not going to solve sweatshops by taking away people's agency.
Obviously.
> You get rid of them by providing viable alternatives.
I'm not sure how this fantasy become reality without protectionist government intervention, or the whole world deciding they won't buy cheaper socks because they aren't certified fair trade. I'm pretty certain which one of those two is more likely though.
Nah, it's too politically unsafe to hire cheap in your own backyard and there'll always be country-level wage gaps on the bottom end, I'm just glad they're (slowly) reducing. No need attempting to run the simulation to a hypothetical end because there either is no end or it's unpredictable (could just as easily be a rise in extreme protectionist tariffs to discourage offshoring thereby re-widening the gap).
There's two options, hire overseas at a lower labor cost (lower currency/lower minimum wage), or lower the minimum wage or currency of your own economy. If the labour costs of the rest of the world increase as their economy develops, it will make sense to employ locally again.
So subsistence wage moves from overseas, back local again... and why pay more than the subsistence wage if there's no government to compel you to do so?
Edit: Keep in mind, the US is a western democracy, and the largest economy, but has plenty of people living on subsistence wages.
> could just as easily be a rise in extreme protectionist tariffs to discourage offshoring thereby re-widening the gap
Protectionism may not re-widen the gap. Many populations starve because all their arable land is used for overseas exports.
While there are negatives, I appreciate how globalization of manufacturing helps lift poorer economies (albeit it slowly and not always agreeing with the politics of the newly-built middle classes). One might expect manufacturing in mid-Africa in two decades.