Is Africa the next East Asia?
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  Is Africa the next East Asia?
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snowguy716
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« on: September 14, 2013, 11:56:41 PM »

Obviously the two regions are very different from one another... but it really finally seems that things in Africa are turning for the better.  Some of this is actually due to investment by the Chinese.

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/139109/shantayanan-devarajan-and-wolfgang-fengler/africas-economic-boom

The signs are all kind of converging:  Reduced political instability, widespread adoption of better farming practices that increase yields and half desertification even with drought, a large, relatively healthy young generation that has had more access to education.

And so many nations in Africa are seeing declines in fertility to more manageable levels.  And the economic growth isn't just in one or two spots... but is becoming widespread and taking place in even resource-poor regions. 

What do you think?  Will Africa begin to rapidly develop?  Will it be uneven or continent wide?
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Franknburger
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« Reply #1 on: September 15, 2013, 01:56:37 PM »

For some countries, signs are truly encouraging: Ghana is a functioning, stable democracy with a pretty good education system (in African comparison), reasonably low corruption, and a emerging domestic IT industry. Neighbouring Ivory Coast is quickly recovering politically and economically from the civil war.
The South African Development Co-operation (SADC) is progressing with creating a regional free trade and investment zone that helps to foster economic development in South Africa and its neighbourhood, up to Tanzania and Zambia.
Ethiopia, at more than 70 million inhabitants,  has become a market too sizeable to overlook, and has a well developed and also rather low-corruption administration. Similar to Vietnam, the large Ethiopian diaspora helps to stimulate inflow of external capital and know-how. Asides, Ethiopia is close enough to the Gulf states to benefit from the region's growing markets and excess of capital.

In order to turn these national/ regional trends into an upswing for the whole continent (or at least its Sub-Saharan part), however, the three "heavyweights", namely Nigeria, Kenia, and Congo, still have to overcome quite a number of problems, including domestic instability, corruption, and tribalism.
Moreover, the Continent lacks land transport infrastructure. As such, aside from Southern Africa, growth rather tends to be induced by trans-Atlantic (Latin America, Europe) and trans-Indian Ocean / Red Sea growth than stemming from autochthone dynamics. Land-locked states, especially in the Sahel, still face substantial constraints when it comes to integrating into international trade.
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opebo
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« Reply #2 on: September 22, 2013, 07:06:35 AM »

In the long run it seems likely - the global system of capitalist enslavement will need fresh raw human meat for its bloody exploitation.
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DC Al Fine
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« Reply #3 on: September 22, 2013, 07:37:35 AM »

What Frankenburger said. Where the government is stable and relatively non-corrupt, there is potential for huge growth. In places where law and order aren't around or they are very corrupt, not so much.
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Link
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« Reply #4 on: October 05, 2013, 07:36:42 PM »

In the long run it seems likely - the global system of capitalist enslavement will need fresh raw human meat for its bloody exploitation.

^This.

Companies have already started decamping from China and started looking for fresh pastures to despoil.  It's a race to the bottom.
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bullmoose88
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« Reply #5 on: October 06, 2013, 11:13:54 AM »

In the long run it seems likely - the global system of capitalist enslavement will need fresh raw human meat for its bloody exploitation.

^This.

Companies have already started decamping from China and started looking for fresh pastures to despoil.  It's a race to the bottom.

So once Africa has been ravaged, again (n*x), where will locusts land next?
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opebo
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« Reply #6 on: October 06, 2013, 12:19:32 PM »

In the long run it seems likely - the global system of capitalist enslavement will need fresh raw human meat for its bloody exploitation.

^This.

Companies have already started decamping from China and started looking for fresh pastures to despoil.  It's a race to the bottom.

So once Africa has been ravaged, again (n*x), where will locusts land next?

Perhaps by that time the North will have fallen into zombie times and they can come back.
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The Mikado
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« Reply #7 on: October 06, 2013, 01:31:11 PM »

It's easy to call Ghana or Botswana success stories...they are.  But the countries that'd have to be the engines of a vibrant sub-Saharan Africa just aren't in place yet.  Nigeria and Ethiopia would be the heavyweight titans of a functioning Africa, but the former is plagued by insurgencies, corruption, and excess violence and the latter is just barely on its feet, with deep-seated ethnic and religious tensions that could bring the whole state tumbling down.  Ethiopia's dramatically high growth rate is as fragile as a hummingbird because the fundamentals still aren't entirely sound.  When those two countries start performing dynamically and become stable, safe places to invest, the rest of Africa may follow suit.

(That South Africa would be the third engine of a successful Africa goes without saying and thus, is not actually said above)

Several regionally-federated currency zones would be nice, and Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi going onto an East Africa Shilling in 2015, if it happens, is a nice step in that direction.
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Tetro Kornbluth
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« Reply #8 on: October 06, 2013, 05:51:18 PM »

It's easy to call Ghana or Botswana success stories...they are.  But the countries that'd have to be the engines of a vibrant sub-Saharan Africa just aren't in place yet.  Nigeria and Ethiopia would be the heavyweight titans of a functioning Africa, but the former is plagued by insurgencies, corruption, and excess violence and the latter is just barely on its feet, with deep-seated ethnic and religious tensions that could bring the whole state tumbling down.  Ethiopia's dramatically high growth rate is as fragile as a hummingbird because the fundamentals still aren't entirely sound.  When those two countries start performing dynamically and become stable, safe places to invest, the rest of Africa may follow suit.

(That South Africa would be the third engine of a successful Africa goes without saying and thus, is not actually said above)

Several regionally-federated currency zones would be nice, and Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi going onto an East Africa Shilling in 2015, if it happens, is a nice step in that direction.

There would also be a fourth engine... but, ahhh, that would be the DRC.
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Sopranos Republican
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« Reply #9 on: October 06, 2013, 07:16:12 PM »
« Edited: October 06, 2013, 07:26:51 PM by Speaker Matt »

On behalf of Simfan, his thoughts:

 "I apologise for the disjointed nature, these are different recent comments made elsewhere."

On the ownership of the electrical grid

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On western perceptions of African development
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Responding to the aforementioned Guardian article

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Africans are still poor! Shocking, that some people are still very poor after eons and eons of rapid growth! They've had enough time to eradicate poverty entirely, have they not? I mean if it was just a decade of growth I might understand, but Africa's been growing a lot longer than that. I mean, one in five without clean water! How horrible, especially when the vast majority of Africans back in the 1990s lived in countries where over 30% lacked clean water and about half in those where over 50% lacked it?

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Absolutely! I mean, just look at places like China, South Korea, or Indonesia, where the poor are literally no better off than they were 30 years ago as the entirety of growth has gone to the upper class. No living standard rise at all, which is why the global income distribution is becoming more and more unequal.

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Indeed, yes, income inequality is worsening in Africa!

A stunning expose! Obviously, it is the fault of neoliberalism and the Washington Consensus that Africans continue to suffer so terribly. We need to stop such market fundamentalism and return to the golden days of development, with the big push, and import substitution industrialisation, and protectionism, because it worked wonders for Africa's economy back in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. I mean, as these charts show, there isn't much of a reduction in African poverty. Bravo, Guardian, Bravo!

It's monumentally idiotic. I mean, just so idiotic. There are some people, who, for some reason, are positively afraid of free and liberal markets. It makes their blood boil. And they're not usually economists. Even politically liberal economists like Sachs and Krugman who rail against Wall Street and so forth still are ardent supporters of free trade, removing protectionism, and open markets. I mean no serious person actually disputes these things. Yet it bothers some people. [/quote]

On the effects of Ethiopian geography on transportation costs and Ethiopian Airlines’ disproportionately large cargo fleet

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Sopranos Republican
Matt from VT
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« Reply #10 on: October 06, 2013, 07:21:43 PM »

On land tenure

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Sopranos Republican
Matt from VT
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« Reply #11 on: October 06, 2013, 07:25:57 PM »

On the importance of good leadership

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Jesus Christ! You love being dead wrong, don't you? Somalis are some of the most entrepreneurial people on the planet, or more properly, many Somalis are very entrepreneurial. According to you, Somalia should be doing quite well... yet look at it. Is Somalia where it is because of "bad national culture", or because Siad Barre and those who followed him f--d it up? People around the world are fundamentally the same. Yes, you might have differences in things like savings rates or whatnot, but people act the same! Give a man in Mombasa, Minneapolis, or Manila the same relative income and same level of education... and you can bet they're going to do pretty much the same things. There is no country that isn't developed even though it had the necessary preconditions because of the "national culture".

There are good societal habits and bad societal habits, and those may have positive or negative effects on growth. But acting like Nigeria's problem is not the corrupt, divisive, and incompetent leaders its had but a societal predilection with bling and cheesy movies is beyond idiotic. Nigeria, obviously, isn't poor because of leaders like GEJ [Goodluck Ebele Jonathan] or Sanusi... had they had leaders like those since 1960 Nigeria would be way, way ahead. But growth is not going to occur overnight.

You really have no grasp of actual economic theory, do you? I mean you say the most ridiculous things. "Foreign investment is bad"... go ask Tanzania, Eritrea, or India how that turned out for them. Yet you keep on opening these sorts of threads, as if you think you do.[/quote]

On liberalization (or the lack thereof) in Ethiopia (see Mikado on Ethiopian fundamentals)

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On the Ethiopian Telecoms sector

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opebo
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« Reply #12 on: October 07, 2013, 06:38:34 AM »

Matt thanks for posting those, and for reminding us what a travesty it is that we lost a wonderful poster to the arbitrary mods.
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TNF
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« Reply #13 on: October 12, 2013, 12:30:08 AM »

In the long run it seems likely - the global system of capitalist enslavement will need fresh raw human meat for its bloody exploitation.

^This.

Companies have already started decamping from China and started looking for fresh pastures to despoil.  It's a race to the bottom.

So once Africa has been ravaged, again (n*x), where will locusts land next?

Space, of course.
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H. Ross Peron
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« Reply #14 on: October 12, 2013, 12:40:18 AM »

What Frankenburger said. Where the government is stable and relatively non-corrupt, there is potential for huge growth. In places where law and order aren't around or they are very corrupt, not so much.
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President Tyrion
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« Reply #15 on: October 12, 2013, 03:12:37 AM »

In the long run, I'd say the rate of economic growth will increase.

In the short term, though, I would think that South Asia is the next East Asia.
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