Why Africa remains dirt poor

The statistics about poverty in Africa, the world’s poorest and second-largest continent, have always made extremely uncomfortable reading. And they probably make international development wonks and people who study poverty shake their heads in utter disbelief.
Perhaps no institution has more disturbing data about poverty in Africa than the World Bank, which for decades has used its arm called the International Development Association (IDA) to combat this scourge but with limited success.

The World Bank says while the average poverty rate for other regions was below 13 per cent as of 2015, it stood at about 41 per cent in sub-Saharan Africa. In the same year, sub-Saharan Africa was home to 27 of the world’s 28 poorest countries and had more extremely poor people than the rest of the world combined.

By 2030, the Bank says, nearly nine of every 10 people in extreme poverty will be living in sub-Saharan Africa. Seven of the 10 most unequal countries in the world are in Africa, most of them in southern Africa. And Nigeria, which overtook South Africa several years ago to become Africa’s largest economy and is one of the continent’s fastest-growing economies, is expected to pass India as the country with the largest number of poor people.
Although the Bank says the world has made tremendous progress in reducing extreme poverty—the percentage of people living in extreme poverty globally fell to a new low of 10 per cent in 2015 (the latest number available) down from 11 per cent in 2013—the total number of poor in sub-Saharan Africa has been increasing.

All sub-Saharan African countries the International Monetary Fund (IMF) says are some of the world’s fastest-growing economies—Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda—are mired in poverty. Nearly all of them have thousands of young people working in foreign countries simply because their economies have signally failed to create jobs for them.
So how is sub-Saharan Africa going to lift its 400-plus million people out of poverty?

I reflected on this question days after I read a speech President Museveni gave during his recent visit to Tanzania. Mr Museveni enumerated inventions such as the printing press and the steam engine that were introduced after the Renaissance and paved the way for the Industrial Revolution.
The gist of his speech was that countries that have developed and become prosperous used their human resources to make machines (read: technology), which they rely on for large-scale production required for commercial purposes—and once they make enough to sell, they look for markets, sell their products and make money.

Many countries that do not have natural wealth and have grown immensely rich are making the most of technology to make products that other countries want to buy. China is the prize example. It has become the world’s largest factory and is manufacturing everything money can buy. Whether you are in a small shop in your suburb or in a world-class store like Carrefour, you will find Chinese made products.
Pundits say Africa has to do what countries like China are doing if it is to lift millions of its people out of poverty. They contend that manufacturing is the answer to Africa’s grinding poverty and rampant unemployment. And they are probably right. Factories can employ thousands of people while also paying tax, thereby boosting the national economy.

But the problem is that in much of Africa, technology is rudimentary, if not non-existent. Few African countries make products that can compete favourably with other products in international markets. The vast majority of African countries have no manufacturing to talk about. Countries with raw materials required for industrial production just export them because they do not have technology and people with skills to turn those materials into great products.

By exporting raw materials, these countries are exporting jobs, in a manner of speaking, as Mr Museveni keeps lamenting—and they do not make as much money as countries that are able to make products. They and their people remain poor.
The way forward for Africa, it seems to me, is to court countries that have advanced technology and get them to impart skills to Africans. On their own, Africans have not effectively harnessed technology.