Industrialisation in Africa: More a marathon than a sprint

Industrialisation in Africa: More a marathon than a sprint(economist.com)

52 points by ocjo 10 years ago | 10 comments

oblio 10 years ago |

> Africa generates only 2% of the world’s demand.

The saddest part. Africa is a huge continent, the second biggest after Asia (or the third biggest if you consider the Americas as 1 continent). It is 3 times bigger than Europe.

Still, as anyone who has ever played an online game with regions, digitally it's almost like it doesn't exist. South Africa is the only African region covered. North Africa is usually bundled with Europe. Everything else is not even a blip on the radar.

I can't help but think of the benefits of getting hundreds of millions of people into the modern age and be sad about that statement in the article :(

jakozaur 10 years ago | |

Yeas, USA companies tend to call that region EMEA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe,_the_Middle_East_and_Af...

Which is usually means Europe, sometimes with Middle East.

danmaz74 10 years ago | |

With what criteria can you unite the two Americas as one continent, and consider Europe separate from Asia?

oblio 10 years ago | | |

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent#Number_of_continen...

I learned at school the 6 continent model presented there :)

Mimick 10 years ago | |

Most of the west support the corrupted politicians over the straight ones on Africa, just because a corrupted one is willing to give you advantages on his land over a straight one. So change isn't easy on Africa.

AnAfrican 10 years ago | | |

That's very simplistic.

Here's a great case :

It is often said that the West picked Mobutu over Lumumba because the lattest was seen as a threat to mining interests.

Yet Mobutu nationalized the mines, then nationalized and redistributed most foreign assets.

And yet he was still supporter by the West.

The explanation: Mobutu played his cards right. The West was worried about Communism, he declared himself as strongly anti-communist and that was enough.

mattlutze 10 years ago |

There's a lot of socioeconomic growth to be had as the many countries in the continent accelerate to compete and thrive on the global economy, but I hope we can understand reality on the ground isn't what all the infomercials (and apparently game server coverage) suggest.

The good news is that these 1.17 Billion people[1] are in the modern age. There's many innovations coming out of Africa that should engender hope and optimism, in banking, education, energy and agriculture to name a few sectors.

I hope we can be cautious about defining the continent by too narrow of a standard when it comes to advancement and entrepreneurship.

1: http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/world_population.htm

netcan 10 years ago |

I'm not sure the economic ladder idea works anymore. The idea was that there's a ladder for economic development starting with agriculture, then textiles then clothes, electronics. Asian countries got on the ladder on different points and followed it to certain extents.

But, I think this doesn't make much sense anymore. As the article mentions, "cheap labour" doesn't get you as far these days.

AnAfrican 10 years ago |

>Rather than electrify the whole country, Ethiopia has concentrated on providing power and transport links to its industrial parks.

That tends to be the tough part. Hard choices.