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The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) recently announced that Africa’s economic development could rise by seven percent by 2015 from this year’s 5,4 percent, International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecast.
By referring to Africa as the poorest, various economists and other interested people would be talking about the people and not about the resources of the vast continent and its islands.
We tend to measure the wealth or poverty of each country by the daily per capita consumption or expenditure of each of the country’s people, such as “each person lives on $1 daily” or so, rather than by each country’s actual natural resources which can and should be processed into usable goods or services.
Historically, the African continent was colonised by Portugal, Britain, France, Spain, Germany, Italy and, much earlier some parts were invaded by Greek, Omani and Phoenician slave-hunters and also primarily because of their natural resources.
Compared to Africa, Europe has virtually no natural resources worth talking or writing about. What Africa largely lacks is modern technology with which to exploit its vast mineral and other resources.
Another weakness on the continent is poor governance whose lack of ideological focus and accountability has turned some African countries into looting arenas for those in positions of authority.
The massive looting has created in some of the states plutocratic regimes at the expense of the majority who live under grinding poverty in a continent that is failing to breathe because of too many mineral resources.
A third cause of poverty on the African continent is uncontrolled population increase, a tragic development that is not matched by the continent’s employment creation and food production capacities.
Talking about food production brings us to the African agricultural sector whose productivity is usually adversely affected by the continent’s unpredictable vagaries of the weather. That is particularly so in the Sahelian region as well as in Southern Africa.
Equatorial Africa’s agriculture has not yet been negatively affected by climatic factors for what it is worth in national wealth-generating terms for the countries concerned.
While the equatorial rains continue falling as of yore, people seem to continue suffering from the debility caused by the highly oppressive climatic conditions of that region.
A symptom of that condition is a general bodily weakness that makes one wish to rest and shun hard physical work most of the time. It is because of this climate-induced feeling (debility) that there is low agricultural productivity in that hot, humid albeit highly fertile region. Typical of this region are Gabon, Republic of the Congo and the upper (northern) areas of the DRC. This climato-human factor is a disadvantage to Africa’s economy.
Be that as it may, some of these countries are sitting on massive mineral wealth. That is so especially with the DRC whose diamonds are a cause of unending internal conflict and where also one of the causes of the treacherous assassination of the founding Prime Minister of that country, Patrice Lumumba, by General Mobutu and Moise Tshombe in 1961.
Gabon, meanwhile, has several billions of barrels of crude oil reserves and other minerals including uranium, gold, manganese and iron. The Republic of the Congo is also an exporter of oil. Its minerals are zinc, lead, sugar, rice and cocoa.
A neighbour of Gabon appropriate to mention is Cameroon some of whose Olympic athletes recently abandoned their team in London obviously to join countless Africans living unlawfully in Britain. They betrayed their nation for economic reasons. Their country exports oil, iron ore and bauxite. If Cameroonians choose to leave their land and live in Europe, like millions of other Africans, it is not because their country is poor but it is rather because of governance that is badly managing the national economy.
Were absolute lack of poverty in terms of natural resources as the prevailing factor, even political leaders would want to emigrate. They do not want to go and live abroad because they have a stake in their country. This is the case with the political leadership of many African states, and was the case with Mobutu in the then Zaire, Colonel Jean Bedel Bokasa in the Central African Republic, General Mubarak’s Egypt, Colonel Gaddafi’s Libya, and much nearer to Zimbabwe, in Swaziland where King Mswati treats the entire nation like his fowl run.
High corruption was involved in the way the leaders acquired those economic stakes. Ordinary people (the masses) were kept off those corrupt self-enrichment circles that literally ruined the national economies concerned.
Such type of governance is against and not for the people in that it creates wealth for a tiny minority and indescribable poverty and misery for the vast majority of the people.
The DRC is a tragic example of a country sitting literally on a bonanza comprising diamonds, uranium, silver, gold, zinc, cadmium, iron, germanium, tin, copper, radium, manganese and the world’s largest cobalt deposits. It is very sad, extremely sad indeed, to point out that while the bowels (so to speak) of that vast country are full of all this wealth, those of most of its people are filled with air.
We should be saying they are empty were it not that nature does not allow a vacuum.
The perennial 4349km-long River Congo runs through the DRC’s savannah grasslands in the south and south-east on its way to the Atlantic coast in the West carrying immense quantities of water which can be utilised for huge irrigation projects to feed the world at large.
With a good government, led by people with a vision, selfless men and women who are 90 percent for their nations and 10 percent for themselves, the author of this opinion has no doubt whatsoever that the DRC can become the most prosperous nation in the world, with the South-East Asian oil and gas exporting state of Brunei coming a distant second.
Presently, the DRC’s approximately 60 million people’s per capita gross domestic product is just about $600 and that of Brunei’s nearly 500 000 people is a whooping $17 600, some $17 000 higher in spite of the DRC’s incredible wealth.
Incidentally, the DRC’s area is some 1 400 800 square kilometres and that of Brunei is a mere 3 200sq km. (At international fora, the State of Brunei is officially called the State of Brunei Darussalam.)
That comparison apart, a look at a much geographically nearer example, Botswana, can help us see how national wealth can be used to improve the people’s social lives.
Botswana is Zimbabwe’s western neighbour, and was formerly called Bechuanaland Protectorate. In became independent on 30 September 1966 and the author of this article was sent from Lusaka by Zapu as its delegate at that country’s first independence celebrations.
That time, that country had only 700 policemen, about six secondary schools, a couple of government and two or three mission hospitals, not more than 100km of tarred roads and no robots whatsoever.
The country was a joint owner of or partner in the then Lesotho-based University of Basutholand, Bechuanaland and Swaziland. After attaining independence, Botswana discovered and exploited a number of minerals including diamonds, copper, nickel, silver, coal and salt.
Its arable land is a mere one percent of its 361 600 sq km area and on it the rural-based Batswana eke out a little sorghum (matrunde, mabele), maize, millet, beans and some melons. Cattle rearing is a major peasant and commercial activity.
By means of revenue from its mining industry and livestock sector, Botswana has built an incredible social sector infrastructure including free medical and educational services.
The national communication sector boasts of about 20 television sets per 1 000 population, about 800 radio-receivers per the same number and a daily newspaper circulation of some 30 per 1 000 population.
Botswana’s per capita gross domestic product is a healthy $6 600. The country’s population is nearly two million. This is commendable by any standards.
With the exception of such countries as the Gambia whose economic backbone are peanuts, and the Comoros (Islands) which relies on vanilla, copra, perfume essences, textiles and tourism for its national economic life, most African countries are generously endowed with a vast array of mineral resources. The continent is probably the richest in the world.
This includes the failed state of Somalia whose minerals include uranium, gypsum, iron, bauxite and tin. What is lacking in most African states are just two important things; good governance, and modern technology which can be acquired from industrialised nations.
Poverty can and should be eliminated from entire African nations instead of the current trend where their massive natural resources are monopolised by a privileged few to enrich exclusively themselves.
To achieve this, voters in Africa should support good policies and not merely charismatic individuals or parties. Policies and not people make good governance.
Online Reporter