Africa: Getting Industrialisation Right

Now the industrialisation project is back, but it is a complex and complicated thing and the course that it would take remains uncertain. There are sceptics and protagonists, cynics and optimists about whether Africa should embark on industrialisation at all or not.

The sceptics (mostly from the West) argue that to talk about industrialisation in Africa is akin to trying to squeeze water from a stone. Africa lacks the basic prerequisites to industrialise and its environment is also not conducive to it. The explanations they advance range from the sublime to the ridiculous.

First, they say that the current production structure and comparative logic do not favour Africa’s bid to embark on any industrialisation programme. Africa is mostly agrarian, does not have the basics for industrialisation – such as steel industries, energy, etc. – and cannot compete with the rest of the world.

In the age of 4D technology, Africa will do better and be happier, by restricting itself to the export of its primary agricultural products to the rest of the world, as it has been doing – that is its competitive edge in global production and trade.

Sceptics say Africa is too backward in scientific knowledge to ever think of industrialisation. Who will then drive Africa’s industrialisation project?

Second, Africa, the sceptics say, is too backward in scientific knowledge to ever think of industrialisation. It lacks highly skilled labour and scientific innovators, its research and development sector is small and poorly funded, its universities are in tatters and its best brains are economic refugees mostly in Western countries. Who will then drive Africa’s industrialisation project?

Third, the sceptics bizarrely also talk about environment and culture. They argue that Africa is too sunny a place and its thick forest poisoned with diseases such as malaria, Ebola etc. are all inimical to creative industrial thinking.

Also, with its belief in voodoo and spiritualism, Africans would prefer worshipping nature, rather than seeking to deconstruct it. As such, it would be better for Africa to content itself with its rudimentary agricultural life and not get involved in the complicated domain of industrialisation.

The sceptics are not pushing a scientific argument; they are pushing an ideological and political case. If Africa were to industrialise, it would be to deny some other parts of the world the market and political leverage they have long exercised over Africa. It would deny jobs, foreign exchange, revenue and other economic benefits to countries which now flood Africa with their industrial products. Keeping Africa down is a good strategy to retain the current unequal balance of a lopsided global capitalist system. Intellectual justifications must be sought in denying Africa a seat in the modern industrial world.

Industrialisation is political
Industrialisation is not an economic but a political project; it is a political project with an economic strategy. It is about making correct policy choices, creating the necessary institutions and incentives and summoning the political will to do things in the most unconventional way.

The history of most now-industrialised or the newly industrialising countries is that industrialisation does not often come through economic orthodoxy. It emerges from thinking ‘outside the box’, thinking ingeniously and doing things unconventionally. It is a thorny path filled with trial and error, successes and failures. This is the story of the UK, Russia, China, South Korea, Japan, Singapore and Brazil.