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.
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.