RAW MATERIAL EXPORT OR VALUE ADDED PRODUCTS?

For the few countries I have visited in Africa and many more I have had to study, the problem remains the same: Inability of leadership to mobilize the people to WORK. Africans are idle. How can idle hands create wealth? The challenge in Africa is not corruption as many will want us to believe, nor is it lack material and human resources, neither is it about opportunities. The bottom line is about lack of creative thinking leadership. Currently, I am keenly following President Paul Kigame of Rwanda, a man clearly different in his thinking. Can he make a difference?

Without doubt, if you talk to anyone with some basic education, there are common agreements that only value addition to raw materials creates wealth. So if you want a prosperous nation, then you must find ways to export value added products and services instead of exporting raw products.

So why is Africa not doing just that?

A very good question and I will try to answer that.

First, it is in the world’s super economies best interest to make Africa the raw material factory of the world. EU, Americas, India, China and even SE Asia will prefer that Africa remains a raw material factory. It does pay them more. The more they can come to the rich raw material endowed Africa  and buy raw products at peanut prices, the more they can continue to make their countries richer by turning those raw materials into finished product, export back to Africa and provide some slavish economic aids in return to African governments.

“So African policy makers and leaders MUST be well tutored on the need to “diversify” their economies by enlarging their export portfolio.” But that export portfolio MUST remain raw materials. That remains the hidden policy trust of the Western economies.

So then those leaders will have to be supplemented by the so called foreign aids. If they make any attempt to add value and to export products emanating from such value addition, they are blocked with trade restrictions, taxes and regulations.

So when you hear the government of PMB screaming on diversifying the economy, they dwell on mining and raw agric products. But common sense teaches that these are not diversification at all. Just a different name to the same thing they have been doing over and over. There is no difference between exporting crude oil and exporting iron ore for instance. Both are raw commodity products subjected to the same market variables. But there is a world of difference between exporting crude oil and refined petroleum product. That is diversification.

What will African nations need today, if they are to counter the neo-colonialist economic cleavages driving there thinking?

1.       Leadership Change

With all sense of modesty, African nations does not need a Mugabe, a Yoweri Musaveni or a Buhari; absolutely not. These guys are the products of slavish colonialist mentality. For them, their survival will have to depend on ideas coming to them from the West. They, in their minds remain slaves to these colonialists, though they remain physically free.

What we need today, are young vibrant, independent minded and creative thinking African’s who can stand their peers anywhere in the global space.

To take Sub-Saharan Africa to the next phase, you will need leaders with an entirely new paradigm shift from what we have today. Nigeria can effectively lead this change because we are well poised both in human and material endowment to effect a change in leadership.

2.       Economic Reform

Africa will have to find an economic model based on the national cultural economies within the federating nations that make up countries in Africa. What was the economic life like before the coming of the slave traders in Igbo nation for instance, or the Efik People?

By answering such questions, we can evolve a model that best fits into who we are. For instance, those models knew no unemployment. Every hand was engaged productively in some form or function of economic activities. Unemployment is a strange import into the African space as a result of a hook-line-sinker of adoption of western economics without alteration.

3.       Technology

Technology is not a western sole proprietorship. It is about human innovation and Africans can as well. Concerted efforts must be made, just like Japan did or Singapore or China or even Malaysia to innovate things that we all need first.  We can do this by changing our education system from certificate driven to knowledge driven. We will need in this regard to change our educational system from theory drive to practical driven. Skills will have to be acquired by doing not just by reading. If we don’t make practical education 70% of weighted acquired knowledge, we can’t compete with the modern world. Theory must be relegated to 30% of educational training in all higher institutions in Africa if we are to bring a change to the fortunes of our people.