₦airaland Forum

People seem to have a very flawed idea of what resources are and what "resource rich" entails.

Africa when you take it as a single entity has a lot of minerals and diverse range of minerals at that, but when you take African countries individually, they are not resource rich.

First thing with resources which is important to note, is that a resource needs to be:
A: Abundant, B: Cheap or affordable to access and use, and C: It has to be useful.

Let me start with C and explain what that really involves. For a resource to be useful you first have to know how to use it. Take Coltan and Cobalt for example which the DRC is lauded over so much. Apart from a few multinational corporations that are extremely specific and niche and have been developed and gained their knowledge over decades, no one knows how to use these minerals, even in the developed world itself, the knowledge gap for these minerals is huge, the same goes for Bauxite, and almost every other mineral found in significant amounts on this continent.

The reason I speak about usefulness is that if these minerals are not useful in our industry which doesn't even exist, the only way we can exploit them is if we export them, which not only may cause Dutch disease (Which in all honesty is already the case) but also doesn't bring in a lot of revenue. For cobalt for example, the DRC exports $5.99 billion, now that's a lot, but it should be noted that's export value*, and the government likely gets a fraction of that and for a country of 100 million people, that's nothing. And the same is true wherever you look, the revenues the Zambian government and thus the entire economy gets from copper is $6 billion, a staggering 75% of the government's revenues.

And speaking of minerals found in significant amounts, we have Diamonds, Copper, Cobalt, Gold, Uranium, and Oil. That's all well and good, but we are not the only ones who have these resources, and our resources aren't even that abundant. In terms of Diamonds, only Botswana, DRC, South Africa and Namibia have "abundant" resources and even their resources pail in comparison to Russia and Australia. The same goes for Oil, Nigeria's 50 Billion barrels are the 11th in terms of reserves, same goes for Uranium (Namibia is 5th) and Gold (SA is 8th)

Mind you, we don't even have truly useful resources, what I mean by this is, we don't have resources anyone can use, we don't have Iron ore in large amounts to at least make steel, we don't have coal which is an extremely cheap source of energy to industrialize with (I mean it is with coal that the UK and US built their entire industrial bases on) and we don't even have Lithium which is a very useful mineral that can be used to make batteries, components in electronics that aren't patent-based. These three resources are far more useful than any that are present on this continent, and we have close to negligible amounts of them.

Never mind the fact that we don't have navigable rivers (meaning logistics and transport is expensive), and finally, we don't have the arable land and the climate to produce grain in large quantities, we produce cash crops, and low-yield tropical crops like cassava and sorghum and it's a known fact that when populations urbanize they switch to Wheat consumption because Wheat is easiest to turn into flour.

African countries are only resource-rich in superficial and quite colonialist terms, unless we industrialize (and that's a big IF*) we won't truly benefit from these resources and thus, IMO, Africa is not "resource-rich".

Hmm.

tfkhntr:
Hmm.

Lol na my exact reaction be this .. no mind the werey. Person go just wake up begin imagine sheet without proof or evidence him go just dey cap like say...

Alphamentips:
Lol na my exact reaction be this .. no mind the werey. Person go just wake up begin imagine sheet without proof or evidence him go just dey cap like say...

My main point wasn't to say we're completely poor or to discourage Africans, the point is to stop behaving as if we have a near limitless amount of resources because we don't, Africa isn't a large single country like Russia, USA, Brazil or Australia where we can rely completely on raw material export. We are a bunch of small countries that will suffer from mediocrity, and we will return to a backwater as soon as the world stops needing our minerals because we rely far too much on them.

It is not having resources but what you achieve with the resources.
Dubai was developed from oil sales.
Meanwhile Nigeria sales in oil were looted.

The truth is Africa was half as productive as Europe, the minerals wouldn't even be enough to meet our demands. Nigeria produces the same amount of oil as Qatar despite been almost 100x the population of Qatar yet we refer to ourselves as oil Giants and get majority of our revenue from that same amount of oil.

Some mentally ill people cook up nonsense and rationalize it by terming it 'unpopular opinion'
Chai

The most important resource is human resources. Sub saharan africa is not lacking that resource.

You may have somewhat of a grasp on the economic side but that's not the end all of everything, the continent has enough navigable waters to trade in basic goods, the importance of which is often overestimated because rivers don't need to connect to the ocean to be useful (which is what most people refer to by lack of navigable rivers); there is PLENTY of arable land, don't know where you got that from; we produce cash crops because that's the focus of most african administration, not because we can't grow anything else. Africa is rich in resources, why would we be exporting them if they weren't abundant, easy to access and useful, you yourself said that DRC exports $5.99 billion, that's not rich to you. The biggest obstacle we face is governance, we have to stop exporting every goddamn resources, we have to stop pretending to be westerners and capitalist by copying and pasting what other people are doing (they've been doing it longer than us and they benefit from institutions that were already in place, institutions that we don't have so catching up to them is out of the question).

We need to actually develop a rule that actually exclusively addresses and focuses our own populations needs. We need to stop exporting our resources and trade amongst ourselves to the point of isolationism. we need better military coordination to de-escalate and de-arm out all the jihadists and anarchists that are destabilizing regions. Africans need to build and develop within Africa, not outside of it, we need our young people to usurp influence and power from the old generation (the West is having its own challenges with this problem now), our old people have proven themselves incapable of the job due to ethnic allegiances and other nonsense, everyone just wants to do their own thing.

Na indeed unpopular opinion as it's falacy

Tsarbomba:
You may have somewhat of a grasp on the economic side but that's not the end all of everything, the continent has enough navigable waters to trade in basic goods, the importance of which is often overestimated because rivers don't need to connect to the ocean to be useful (which is what most people refer to by lack of navigable rivers); there is PLENTY of arable land, don't know where you got that from; we produce cash crops because that's the focus of most african administration, not because we can't grow anything else. Africa is rich in resources, why would we be exporting them if they weren't abundant, easy to access and useful, you yourself said that DRC exports $5.99 billion, that's not rich to you. The biggest obstacle we face is governance, we have to stop exporting every goddamn resources, we have to stop pretending to be westerners and capitalist by copying and pasting what other people are doing (they've been doing it longer than us and they benefit from institutions that were already in place, institutions that we don't have so catching up to them is out of the question). We need to actually develop a rule that actually exclusively addresses and focuses our own populations needs. We need to stop exporting our resources and trade amongst ourselves to the point of isolationism.

we need better military coordination to de-escalate and de-arm out all the jihadists and anarchists that are destabilizing regions. Africans need to build and develop within Africa, not outside of it, we need our young people to usurp influence and power from the old generation (the West is having its own challenges with this problem now), our old people have proven themselves incapable of the job due to ethnic allegiances and other nonsense, everyone just wants to do their own thing.

I completely agree with your last paragraph. My main point with the OP wasn't to say we're completely poor or to discourage Africans, the point of the OP is to stop behaving as if we have a near limitless amount of resources because we don't, Africa isn't a large single country like Russia, USA, Brazil or Australia where we can rely completely on raw material export. We are a bunch of small countries that will suffer from mediocrity, and we will return to a backwater as soon as the world stops needing our minerals because we rely far too much on them.

Your paragraph is the very reason I made this post, our countries will remain poor if we continue relying on resources like this, I mean, if Namibia had large reserves of any resource like Kuwait has oil to the point that any amount of capital invested or loan secured won't be as much of a risk, then sure I can understand putting so much reliance into natural resources, but again, we don't, and neither does any individual country apart from maybe South Africa.

For over 500 years that we came in contact with the oyinbo man we still don’t know how to harness our so called resources. The Chinese are currently exploring and mining it for us and giving us crumbs. Africa is certainly under a spell

ednut1:
For over 500 years that we came in contact with the oyinbo man we still don’t know how to harness our so called resources. The Chinese are currently exploring and mining it for us and giving us crumbs. Africa is certainly under a spell

And should you say we cant learn too,and thatz IF/ASSUMING itz only chinese mining as you say?


You as you are,cant you learn IT and is mining the only essence of the human brain?


Guy

Stop taking whatever whites do as superior



Africans have 2 be more united 2 have stronger economies ,thatz all.


We should never praise whites 4 anything

Stop dis fallacy that whites give us this,that,whatever


Oh newton stated laws of motion

And so fvcking what?


Mtchw

AFRICA IS RESOURCE RICH. THE LAND IS THE LORD AND ITS FULLNESS AND HE MADE HUMAN THE EXPLORER AND EXPLOITER OF THE FULLNESS OF HIS LAND. LET AFRICAN HUMANS BE RESPONSIBLE AND DISCOVER THE RICHNESS OF AFRICA.

HellVictorinho8:
And should you say we cant learn too,and thatz IF/ASSUMING itz only chinese mining as you say?


You as you are,cant you learn IT and is mining the only essence of the human brain?


Guy

Stop taking whatever whites do as superior



Africans have 2 be more united 2 have stronger economies ,thatz all.


We should never praise whites 4 anything

Stop dis fallacy that whites give us this,that,whatever


Oh newton stated laws of motion

And so fvcking what?


Mtchw

typing with a white man made phone or Chinese copy. Over the white man created internet. 🥴🥱. The Chinese, Japanese, arabs, Koreans have proven to us that despite the white man influence you can develop your own things or copy what is in existence already. What have Africans done

Interesting topic though, this should be on front page.

Op is correct to a reasonable extent. It all boils down to the power of human resources and value addition. People who have the knowledge naturally rule over others. When you process and export, your currency gains, giving you economic leverage over foreign countries' natural resources. When you can afford to import cheap natural resources overseas, why exploiting your own if you have it. It makes economic sense to save it. When people say Africa is rich, it's more like saying African resources are cheap because of lack of skills to use them solve domestic problems.

ednut1:
typing with a white man made phone or Chinese copy. Over the white man created internet. 🥴🥱. The Chinese, Japanese, arabs, Koreans have proven to us that despite the white man influence you can develop your own things or copy what is in existence already. What have Africans done

But i disagree

The white man did nothing


What has the white man done

You raise salient points.

But I disagree on point C.

A mineral doesn't necessarily have to be locally useful before it can create real value.
As long as it can be exchanged, then it is useful.
So, the real issue isn't the usefulness of specific minerals in local industries but the net gained in
value from exploiting them when we factor in population.

If a country where to gain massive value from a "useless" mineral through export, nothing stop
such from investing excess export gains into other industries where the country
could have a competitive advantage.

I believe Africa countries generally are not resource-rich due to earnings per capita courtesy
of high populations and not the presence or absence of specific minerals.

Strategic Considerations