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Bernard Bwoni Correspondent
It is important to note that only a handful of countries in this world have escaped abject poverty and attained high standards of living through services and shopping malls alone. For the rest, it has been by churning workers through factory gates and into sweatshops the Chinese, Taiwanese, Singaporean and Brazilian way.

Africa will be no exception and will have to go through sweatshops and factories to lift its over one billion population out of poverty. Farming, services and the export of commodities are the main anchors of Africa’s economies and this clearly explains the stagnation in economic progress.

The challenge the continent will face is technological advances which have rendered traditional industrial patterns impotent. There are faster robots doing work that traditionally required hundreds of people and at a much faster speed.

President Robert Mugabe and Zimbabwe are on the right path, focusing and emphasising value addition and beneficiation of the country’s natural and agricultural resources instead of exporting them in their raw forms.

China has managed to lift a huge chunk of its over one billion people out of poverty and attained its near-developed status on the back of a strong value-added manufacturing base, and in 2015, over 30 percent of China’s GDP share came from manufacturing.

This is where Africa still has a long way to go. A country like Botswana is touted as an example of economic prowess in Africa yet it is just a backyard storage for imports from all over the world.

It is important that Africa develops a very strong value-added manufacturing base. African countries are lagging behind and this is evidenced by a poorly share contribution of manufacturing to national GDP figures.

South Africa’s is 13 percent compared to China’s 30 percent, Brazil 21 percent, Ireland 37 percent, and India 17 percent. Botswana’s manufacturing share to national GDP is a mere 6 percent, Sierra Leone 2 percent, Rwanda 5 percent, Tanzania 6 percent, Namibia 10 percent, Nigeria 9 percent and Zambia 8 percent.

Zimbabwe has been under economic sanctions for over 15 years now and the contribution of manufacturing to GDP is 11 percent and rising on the back emphasis on value addition and beneficiation.

The above indicators point to an urgent need for Africa to focus on value addition and beneficiation of the continent’s natural resources.

The combined GDP of the 54 countries in Africa is around $1.5 trillion, less than that of Germany alone at $3.4 trillion which is well over double the combined African GDP.

Africa has a population of 1.2 billion people whilst Germany’s is 81.5 million people. So why is it that Africa, which is home to over 70 percent of the world’s most strategic minerals, can only have access to less than 2 percent of the world trade and only an insignificant 1 of the world’s manufacturing?

It is easy to dismiss these shocking and depressing statistics and put it all down to corruption and mismanagement. Even with corruption and mismanagement, surely Africa should at least have made some strides in industrial development.

The problem is capitalism and the restraints it has put on the continent to execute meaningful economic activity. This is a continent that has been reduced to a resource extraction Colosseum and mere scrapyard for cheap imports from those who do manufacture and grow their economies. The whole continent has been conditioned to be preoccupied with the simplistic notion that the only reason for any lack of meaningful economic progress continent-wide is corruption and mismanagement. This is a continent where academics, PHD holders and the many highly esteemed, crack their heads, hold conference after conference, symposiums and argue amongst themselves that Africa is failing to progress because of corruption. Well, it’s not that simple.

Capitalism is and has always been the greatest hurdle to Africa’s rise economically. The continent is stuck in an economic conundrum.

Here is a continent that is preoccupied with “foreign direct investment” instead of looking inward, indigenising and developing its own value-added manufacturing base.

Every developed country has gone through the mire and mud of manufacturing. The only real FDI that the African continent is attracting at the moment is glitz shopping malls, brand new mining trucks and nothing else and hence why the whole combined 54 African countries have access to less than 1 percent of the world’s manufacturing.

This is unfortunate because with the amount of natural resources the continent possesses, its share of access to the world market should be larger.

I have written and will continue to write about protectionism. These shocking statistics clearly highlight the need for protectionism, otherwise the continent will remain the dumping ground for manufactured wares from industrialised countries.

The simple fact remains that there is no manufacturing in Africa, and without manufacturing, the continent will not reach the status of being industrialised or developed and attain high standards of living. Protectionism is not new; it has helped all the developed countries to be where they are today.

There are no shortcuts and there are no exceptions. All African academics and learned gurus need to shelve their bookish theories and realise that, for the continent to thrive, there is an urgent need to refocus and strive for economic self-sufficiency, and force its way into the globalised production value chain.

Fancy shopping malls and truckloads of extracted minerals are not going to transform Africa into an economic manufacturing giant. Protectionism will cushion Africa’s embryonic industry from the cheap imports that have rendered the combined continent’s entire economies highly uncompetitive of the world stage.

Africa has not failed because of poor leadership, or corruption; these are mere symptoms of the spanners in the works that capitalism throws in the way of any meaningful economic progress for every African country. For as long as I can remember, the FDI hymn has been sung and echoed countless times across Africa, but it seems no one is interested in industrialising the continent.

Everyone is more interested in unhindered extraction of the continent’s abundant natural resources.

A glittering and plush shopping mall in a poverty-stricken African country with 100 percent of the shops owned by foreigners and 95 percent of the products, goods and services sold being foreign imports, is pointless and will only put Africa many years backwards in terms of economic progress.

So, instead of focusing on the problem at hand, what are the proposed solutions for the continent? As highlighted, the traditional manufacturing model has been tampered with due to fast-paced innovations and technological advances such as robots, super-fast computers, mobile technology and so on.

The key is to invest in the new innovations while at the same time prioritising value addition and beneficiation of Africa’s natural resources in Africa.

There is no point in improved technologies and innovations only for the purposes of facilitating the unabated extraction of the continent’s natural resources for value addition elsewhere.

The introduction of technologies requires a strategic focus on skills development and training. Investment in new technologies without training and skills development only creates ghost factories, warehouses and towns.

Beneficiation and value-addition require specific skills and significant amounts of capital. So, this is another potential stumbling block and how can Africa find its way past this?

The continent is made up of 54 countries and multilateral joint working and public-private partnerships will assist and see Africa take off economically. It is important to emphasise that these private-public partnerships be local.

The continent’s regions are separated by inadequately developed infrastructure and dissemination of training and skills development will potentially be hindered.

Emphasis should be on mobile technologies to enhance training and skills development. The issue of distance is addressed and areas where the training infrastructure is limited will most likely benefit from virtual or mobile forms of training.

Africa will have to continue with broad-based infrastructure development projects such as improved road networks and highways, power plants, mobile technologies, water development and innovations in mining and agriculture.

The issue of incapacitated or non-existent structural economic infrastructure has been one of the biggest hindrance to African economic development. The need for power and logistical facilities can never be understated for Africa to realise meaningful economic development and progress. The small and medium enterprises are short-term solutions, however for long-term and broad development status to be achieved, the continent has to build on economies of scale for reductions in production costs and increased productivity.

This is critical for economic development, developing a strong manufacturing base and enhancing the export base. Africa has one advantage in that most raw materials are on the continent. The cost of transport of raw materials are already reduced before we even start.

Another critical next step in Africa’s economic development and the development of a strong value-added manufacturing base is collaborative working amongst African countries to create solid economic clusters. This is a continent of over 1.2 billion people, and rising. All other countries in the world are using Africa as the dumping ground for their manufactured wares. Africa, with a coordinated approach, can harness this entire 1.2 billion market and expand. This is an extraordinary continent with resources, both material and human. Domestic industrial clusters will produce to cater for local demand and beyond. This is the essence of creating long-term and sustainable economic development.

The continent has no choice but to heed President Robert Mugabe’s profound words that for each and every African country to realise true economic development, we have to put back the means of production into our hands.

We have to emphasise beneficiation and add value to our natural resources instead of truckloads of unprocessed materials exiting the continent. For Africa to escape the claws of capitalism that continue to choke it, the emphasis should be on a value-added manufacturing base. There are no shortcuts and only Africans will develop Africa.

Article first appeared on NewZimbabwe.com