Africa | Richest Continent Poorest People?

Africa is the richest continent with the poorest people. We have the longest history, but our people are the most ignorant about that history — Dr. Kimani Nehusi

Most of Africa is not as resource-rich as commonly believed. To claim Africa is the richest continent is also erroneous because Eurasia is far richer, and it depends on what you define as a continent, who you ask, what metrics you use, and what is trending on memes.

We often fail to interrogate our eternal statements because we have heard them all our lives. But that does not make them true. Only critical research can give us solid statements. According to an Al-Jazeera article, beneath the surface of Africa lies a wealth of mineral resources of enormous value. In 2019, the continent produced almost 1 billion tonnes of minerals worth $406bn. But is that the entire picture?

Africa is not the richest continent. It never has been. Its natural resources are abundant, but wealth is not measured by what can be extracted from the soil. It is measured by the capacity of a nation’s people to create, innovate, organize, deliver and trust. That capacity is still underdeveloped in many African nations. —Dr. Joybert Javnyuy

Russia leads the world in total natural resource value (around $75 trillion) due to vast oil, gas, timber, and mineral reserves, followed by the United States ($45T) and Saudi Arabia ($34T). Canada, Iran, China, Brazil, Australia, Iraq, and Venezuela round out the top ten, with significant wealth derived from energy sources (oil, gas) and minerals such as coal, iron ore, and rare earths.

If you enclose a forest and sell it for timber, GDP goes up. If you burn subsistence farms and turn the land into cotton plantations, GDP goes up. But this accounting tell us nothing of what local communities lose in term fo their use of that forest or their access to food.  The costs too their livelihoods and wellbeing is swpt under the statistical rug. GDP is not a legitimate proxy for measuring poverty. — Jason Hickel ¹

 

Above is a map of land usage. Arable land and land under permanent crops occupy only about 6 percent of Africa’s total land area. Africa cannot feed itself.

Singapore and South Korea had about the same GDP as most African countries at the time of Independence, but they have since developed into great economies and players on the world stage.https://africanholocaust.info/africa-richest-continent-poorest-people/

Note: We are writing this article as an offshoot of an epic piece on the Cultural problem that holds African development back. This ties into it because people with no culture of globalized indigenous manufacture will always be poor no matter how rich their continent may be. If you are sitting on diamonds but have not invented the drill, then your potential wealth is nonexistent.

What is the point in showing how many minerals found in Africa are also found in a phone when no one in Africa invented any component in the phone? These resources predate human beings; you do not get credit for being born next to an oil field or copper deposits. If you still don’t know how to turn sand into glass, then what is your development potential?

Africa’s resources make wonderful memes and orphan quotes, but ask yourself what it actually means if a continent (a taxonomic term) has 30% of the resources. Is Africa a country with a united governance acting or owning those resources? It is these fun facts that help to confuse people. Next to no one who likes these facts understands economics, but in lay terms, cannot understand how the quantity of resources has no true translation into development. China has more rare Earth metals than any other place on Earth, but it means nothing for its development. The two realities are not contingent upon one another. The moon has trillions of tons of aluminum. What does that potential translate into? Nothing.  ²

AFRICA IS NOT A POLITY

The map below shows countries. Which one is an African country? A continent is a made-up geographic term; it is not a political or economic block. No one interacts with “The African continent”; they interact with the economies of South Africa and Ethiopia. There is no African economic bloc that negotiates anything with anyone. Not even itself. Intra-African trade was sitting at 2% in 2010.

HUMAN RESOURCES

The belief that natural resources guarantee wealth is one of Africa’s most persistent illusions. It allows governments to postpone the hard work of institution-building. It also weakens public expectations of systemic change. This is why the presence of oil in Nigeria has not produced widespread prosperity, and why the timber and mineral wealth of Cameroon has not lifted the nation to economic excellence. —Dr. Joybert Javnyuy

One of the most neglected resources of any continent is its people. A nation may export raw crude oil, but without its people’s wealth, that intangible wealth,  the value added to that raw crude happens elsewhere. If 15 million plus people were lost to a continent over 300 years, what economic impact would that have on African development? Because common people will say that black slaves in Africa. And this is why language is so important. And it is sad how most African academics neglect language. They were not black slaves. These were healthy people with strength and education in farming, metalsmiths in some cases, literacy in Arabic and Ajami, griots, administrators, judges, medicine men, scholars, and musicians. A far cry from black slaves whose eternal condition was as slaves. They were captives in Africa, and enslaved in the Americas, where their skills were put to use, as Eric Williams would put it, in the shining cities of the damn. Barbadian scholar Hilary Beckles would be even more nuanced.

Every nation that has risen to wealth has done so through deliberate investment in intangible capital. In the United States, universities, legal systems, and innovation ecosystems have been central to national prosperity. —Dr. Joybert Javnyuy

 

FAMILIAR RHETORIC

Many economists neatly sum up Africa as the phenomenon of the natural resource curse in Africa. Understanding the reason why a natural resource-rich continent like Africa is still grappling with extreme poverty, inequality, and underdevelopment is key to policymakers and researchers.

Africa is rich in some resources, largely rare earth metals. Botswana is the world’s second-largest diamond producer, Rwanda is the eighth largest tungsten producer, the DRoC produces 70% of the world’s cobalt, South Africa produces the most chromium and platinum as well as the second most palladium, etcetera. But is mineral wealth what makes nations wealthy? What does Japan have? What does Hong Kong have? And people confuse things. The US is not the richest country; it has the largest economy. Luxembourg is the richest country in the world. So there is a difference between the economy and how rich a country is. Nigeria is a prime example of being the richest country in Africa, yet the standard of living in Nigeria is horrendous, even compared to South Africa.

But what do these stats mean in real-world terms? Because in real-world terms, the photo below is of South Africa.

So South Africa has a beautiful GDP, but look at its wealth inequality, which makes up that GNP and GDP. Very similar to a slave economy in the 16th century.

According to the United Nations, Africa is home to about 30 percent of the world’s mineral reserves, 12 percent of the world’s oil, and 8 percent of the world’s natural gas reserves. As impressive as that is, now look at the physical size and demographic of Africa. It is not like most of Africa is bursting with resources.

So as a whole, Africa appears mineral-rich, but these resources are actually scarce and inaccessible to its local population, either because of a lack of knowledge or imperial designs. And lack of knowledge is an educational or development crisis. Without help, Nigeria could not get that oil. Most of the resources need final processing outside of Africa. But while being carted off to foreign countries, the illusion of resource richness remains.

GOLD TO ARAB COUNTRIES

Where in UAE are they mining gold? The UAE, particularly Dubai, gets most of its gold from African nations like Sudan, Mali, Ghana, Uganda, and others, sourcing from artisanal mining and often involving smuggled or conflict gold, making it a major global trading hub with weak origin controls, and increasingly from Russia due to sanctions. The UAE has no significant domestic gold mines but serves as a key transit point, refining and re-exporting gold to major markets like India, Switzerland, and China.

LAND QUALITY

I asked Google about Africa’s poor land, and this is what it said.

So, Africa has 65% of the world’s uncultivated land, which is unusable. So AI is discussing potential arable land. How can it be arable if it cannot be used to grow anything?

Africa faces a severe soil crisis, with up to 80% of its cultivated land degraded due to erosion, nutrient loss (30-60kg/ha/yr), and unsustainable farming, threatening food security for over 485 million people and potentially making half the arable land unusable by 2050. (AI). Contrast this statement with the 65% of uncultivated arable land.

Arable land is land that is plowed or tilled regularly and is suitable for growing crops like cereals, vegetables, and pulses, distinct from pasture or woodland, essentially land “able to be ploughed“

Then how does Africa have arable land when it does not meet the first condition? It has only the potential to be arable. But it is not arable.

HISTORICAL WEALTH

Historically, the most important resources that has made many countries rich in energy are coal and oil. Britain had a lot of coal and later a lot of oil was discovered with it. Coal was a key catalyst for the Industrial Revolution. Later, several countries, including Norway, countries in the Arab peninsula, became rich with oil and gas.

The continent’s largest oil producer — Nigeria — produces about 1.5m barrels per day. This sounds like a lot but is just 10% of what the US produces. Again, much less than Russia, Saudi or Canada. If Nigeria grows its middle class, it won’t have sufficient oil for its own population. And the oil did help Nigeria be among the richest in terms of GDP in Africa, but what about the rest of Africa? Ethiopia has controversially tapped into its Blue Nile, but what about all the other African countries?

Below is a map of water in Africa—the most critical resource for any country. Most of the continent is either red or yellow (deserts). The dark blue zone in the center is rainforests and not as suitable for farming. That leaves very few parts of Africa that are suitable for large-scale farming, South Africa and Zimbabwe being two.

This leads to this map of farmable lands. Agricultural productivity in Africa is severely constrained by extensive land and soil degradation, a challenge that has persisted for decades. Approximately 75%-80% of the continent’s cultivated area is reportedly degraded, resulting in a loss of 30kg-60kg of nutrients per hectare annually. This affects more than 485 million people (65% of the population)1. Further, projections indicate that over half of the currently arable land may become unusable by 2050. Various factors contribute to the continent’s soil degradation, including the loss of organic matter, erosion from water and wind, acidification, biodiversity loss, and salinity. (NEPAD)

Most African countries remain net importers of mineral fertilizers, and smallholder farmers struggle to access quality fertilizers due to financing and distribution challenges.

And that brings us to the map of food production.

The continent’s largest iron ore producer, South Africa, produces about 77,000 tons/year, a third of India’s and less than 10% of Australia’s. Most of the rest of Africa has few iron ore mines.

The continent’s largest producer of Aluminium — Mozambique — produces 1/7 of India and 1/70 of China. Most of Africa has hardly any aluminum production. The continent as a whole has very limited Bauxite reserves.

In copper, the continent does a little better — Congo and Zambia have decent copper resources, but a fraction of what a major producer like Chile produces.

People think of diamonds, gold, etc as profitable. But, they are not. South Africa and Botswana each export about $ 2 billion a year worth of diamonds, but India and Israel make far more money off these diamonds than the two African producers. To put that in context, Norway exports $49b in Oil & Gas, which are not expensive to extract. Whenever you think Africa has gold, diamonds, lithium, etc, convert that to dollar terms, and you will find it is pretty average.

AGRICULTURE

While total global agricultural production has risen by 145% over the last 40 years, the opposite is true for Africa. While Africa’s foreign exports of cocoa, coffee, and other commodities have risen, food production has fallen by 10 percent.

Seventy percent of Africa’s population is involved in agriculture, yet nearly a quarter of the population (250 million) is undernourished. One-third of the population of sub-Saharan Africa suffers from food insecurities.

Through our travels in Africa, a huge amount of African land is abandoned. We have footage of this in Zimbabwe which is unpublished. Even the arable land is cultivated using the most primitive methods. This speaks to external forces as well as a lack of education (skills). So after 200,000 years of human history, the African has not progressed much despite domesticating rice and many other food staples.

The same hectare of land that the Chinese used to cultivate can yield thousands to tens of thousands of dollars in grains or vegetables. Whereas the Africans would grow it themselves, and even the family would go hungry.

CULTURE OF AID

Aid is not merely one source of financing among others. It serves to make the extraction of wealth from Africa possible. Today’s neoliberal era is characterized by the commodification of nature, the privatization of public goods and services, the liberalization of markets, and the licensing of looting and environmental destruction by transnational corporations. Aid uses public funds to subsidize and encourage the implementation of neoliberal policies that have resulted in the growing impoverishment of the majority, and the obscene accumulation of wealth by national elites who are among its main beneficiaries.

When Rwandan economics students write a paper on developmen,t their favorite word is encourage investment. That is a cultural mindset where development must be external. There are “business people in South Africa waiting on grants to start businesses. Until then they will use their time upvoting nonsense on social media.

FINAL GOODS

An AI image of a poor African boy making a car is more satisfying in the African cultural mindset than Africans owning a clothing factory. We have discussed this in other articles, but it is a cultural problem. Where things that look good are favored at the expense of real development. It creates an opportunity for greedy pastors and celebrity culture where the wealth of Tyla and Rihanna are seen as “development” and malls owned by Whites and Indians in Cape Town are seen as African development. The Lazy development is concerned with how things make us feel as opposed to what they mean for our true transformation.

In South Africa, no one cares who owns the malls, as long as they can be clients of White capitalism. As long as they have Layby and can access brand names, fancy phones, and Brazilian hair.

In Motherland, we demonstrated that Africa manufactures very few final goods, and that is not helped by the investment mentality that keeps the skills foreign. Compounding this is the lack of any soft industries in Africa like India. While there are no graphs specific to skills, Africa is the poorest. As a guide let us assume skills = education to get a physical image of what is under discussion.

Using stats is an art form, people can creatively use them to support any argument they want. But they rarely tell the entire picture. The map of how rich Africa is contrasted against actual mineral deposits transforms our understanding; clearly, resources are scattered and many people in Africa have no access to them. They had no access to them historically due to lack of technology, and education, and then they had no access to them due to colonialism, and today they have no access to them because of mismanagement at the government level. Africa is not saturated with resources for the 1.3 billion people. (The total population of Africa combined is still lower than that of China and India.) And we cannot look at data in isolation from other factors.

Our position is the greatest factor is that African culture, beyond the visible spectrum, is at the root of why Africa not only is poor, but will remain poor no matter what opportunities are given. The cultural mindset of Africans, as a generalization, is at odds with the development we crave.

1. Progress and its Discontents He discusses how the data collected was bias and focused on colonial interest[↩]
2. https://www.mining.com/moon-richer-in-metals-than-previously-thought-nasa/[↩]