₦airaland Forum

African industrialization has to be among the most important things happening in the world right now. The vast continent, with more than 1.2 billion people, is home to an increasing fraction of the human beings who are still mired in extreme poverty:

Leading in the Wrong Way
By 2030, the World Bank projects that almost all the people in extreme poverty will live in sub-Saharan Africa. The reason is twofold. First, Africa’s population is growing rapidly:

The Second Super Continent


Second, Africa has lagged in the industrialization necessary to generate mass employment. The lack of strong, stable governments — a legacy of colonialism — has made it difficult to provide the education, infrastructure, court systems and other public goods that help prepare countries for the leap from subsistence farming to factory work. Well-meaning Western aid and international development agencies couldn’t fill the gap. Meanwhile, nations in East Asia and Southeast Asia became the world’s factories before Africa did.

But late doesn’t mean never. Rising labor costs in China, and the threat of U.S. tariffs, are finally causing manufacturers to diversify their supply chains. Some of their factories will go to Vietnam and Bangladesh, two rising stars of the developing world. But those countries won’t be big enough to replace China, which means that if manufacturers really want to keep costs down, many will have to look to Africa.

This process is already well underway. In her book “The Next Factory of the World: How Chinese Investment Is Reshaping Africa,” Irene Yuan Sun — a development-aid worker turned McKinsey & Co. researcher — describes the wave of private Chinese investment sweeping the African continent. This investment often goes overlooked by the international press, which tends to focus on China’s splashy government-backed infrastructure projects and loans. But what Sun describes is something else — Chinese businesspeople moving to Africa and building privately owned factories.



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https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-04-24/africa-s-only-way-out-of-poverty-is-to-industrialize

Nigeria only focus on capital projects with little or no bearing to alleviating poverty in the land.

China industrialized their way out of abject poverty of the 1980s. That template is an open secret for Nigeria to copy but our leaders are bereft of such ideas.

matify83:
Nigeria only focus on capital projects with little or no bearing to alleviating poverty in the land.

China industrialized their way out of abject poverty of the 1980s. That template is an open secret for Nigeria to copy but our leaders are bereft of such ideas.

What then is the purpose of the free trade zones if not to invite private investors? Our problem particularly in Nigeria is electricity and convoluted government policies in regard to setting up businesses. Some factories cannot run on generators.

Africa miss what Biafra could have become. Indeed, in Biafra, Africa died!

matify83:
Nigeria only focus on capital projects with little or no bearing to alleviating poverty in the land.

China industrialized their way out of abject poverty of the 1980s. That template is an open secret for Nigeria to copy but our leaders are bereft of such ideas.

We can Spear head that change in a bit