chump said:
The success stories in Africa have been South Africa , Kenya and Morocco. Whilst the first two have had their share of problems all three share one common denominator. They are probably the most politically stable countries in Africa in which to do business
Over 20 years ago my brother set up and ran a blue chip pharm in Kenya. After that it was Morocco and finally Egypt. The bottomline (and it's objective not personal) is this. The markets are very thin (not surprising) and the kind of almost culteral work ethic that makes for stable operations is damned hard to implement. Other than that local customs(for want of a better description) are a constant source of difficulties. Without political stability with all that that implies the aforementioned "difficulties" are barely financially worthwhile except on a exploitation basis which you might think of has colonialism.
Colonialism seems to have a bad taste these days. However , it was a business and as a business there was an exchange , or I should say a potential exchange. In effect colonialism brought the political stability that was necessary for the effective use of resources. When colonialists left political anarchy resumed and forward development virtually ceased.
Am I defending colonialism ? I don't have to , it was just a fact and asa fact it is associated with other facts. These facts are easily identifiable by just crunching financial numbers.
Africa is it's own worst enemy and only education can bring about major change there.
Unfortunately just as in trading education can be painful and lengthy. At this time some African countries might be making relative progress ,but it's very slow. A lot of corporate money could flow in that direction and end up being poured down a hole without any meaningful return because basically they are not ready politically and culturally to make the most of it. Hey , we have the same problem here except the money is not corporate , it's called the social security system !.
I agree with you Africa some of African problems come from within. But also some of its problem can traced to external factors.
Yes colonialism may be did provide political stability because any opposition to the system would have decisively put down by any means neccessary. But i don't think ther was much benefits for indigenous people.Of course colonialism was there as the source of cheap raw materials. No attempt was made to build any infrastructure, manufacturing or processing plants in most countries. After political independence some African countries were doing marginal better until they start to follow IMF and World Bank plans.
Plus most of the vicious wars started because of natural resources, guns and ammunition in exchange of natural resources and some western sponsored military coup.
In 1980s, socialist ideas were abandoned throughout almost the entire continent and capitalism was adopted as the route to development. By 1990, Almost all of the nations of Africa had agreed to follow rigorous IMF restructuring plans. IMF recommendations saw the continent's currencies drop by at least 50%, the selling off of government-owned industries, and the slashing of government spending and massively job losses. After more than twenty years, however, these methods have seen as little success.
Only a handful of African states reached new levels of wealth, and many others became poorer over the course of the 1990s. It was a bit like Russia when they started to follow IMF. Most of essential and important companies were bought by elites few and western companies for peanut. Which did make few people very rich with little benefit to the general population.
While the developed world has insisted that Africa open its markets and eliminate public subsidies, this has been one-sided as the developed world has not opened its markets to agricultural goods from Africa nor has it eliminated agricultural subsidies. At the GATT free trade talks, the African leaders repeatedly request that the developed nations abolish the subsidies they provide their farmers and open their markets to African agricultural goods. It has been argued that the abolition of the subsidy would have following beneficial effects for the developing world and Africa:
The developed nations would produce less food locally, therefore providing a larger export market for developing countries. Food prices would rise without the artificial subsidy and therefore would increase profits for food exports from the developing world. The developing nations could adopt a more balanced agriculture policy, producing food and grain for export; this would provide a surplus that would shield countries from famine.
On the continent future,The few points to consider is Africa will become more important as demand for natural resources intensify To take just one example, the West is keen to tap energy sources outside the volatile Middle East. The Gulf-of-Guinea countries in West Africa. Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, Sao Tome and Principe, Chad, Cameroon, Gabon, Congo-Brazzaville and Angola--form a region dubbed the New Middle East Gulf because of its immense untapped petroleum resources. The United States has declared African oil a national strategic interest that is predicted to provide 25 per cent of US oil by 2015.
China will increasingly depend on African oil as Middle East and South America oil is still dominated by US. India is forecast it will importing almost 87% of its oil in the next 2 decades. Both of these countries will be on the lookout for all sort of natural resources to cope with their expanding economy. Where best to look than the least explored continent.
I can see in the next 20 years or so Africa will become strategically important to the world because of the above factors. Which might help the continent to become stable. After all, the middle east itself was on almost on the same Level as Africa recently as the 1960s, when few could imagine the importance it would attain over the next 30 years.
