In recent times, the chorus about Africa’s future is a very cheerful sounding one. A number of the world’s leading management consultants, academics and economists are churning out reports trumping up an African future. The core premise for a majority of these reports is rooted in the demographic dividend that will become increasingly African. According to Unicef, by 2050, Africa’s population will have doubled to reach approximately 2 billion people. Over 1 billion Africans will be below the age of 18, and birth rates will continue to grow. Ideally, such population growth, as most of these predictions point to, bode well for the continent as it’ll have a large working age population at a time when other continent’s face the exact opposite. It is clear that by 2050, some nations will be no more than giagantic old people’s homes.
The ideal scenario as it’s been repeatedly peddled in media of late, is that manufacturing nations like China and India will hand over this responsibility to Africa. This is based on their rapidly expanding earnings per capita that will effectively make them expensive manufacturing destinations in the not too distant future. In the 1960s Japan was the rising manufacturing giant of the world, shifting from low quality mass production to sophisticated and high quality manufacturing. This shift had the effect of propping up the nation’s fortunes and opening the door for South East Asian tigers to follow suit.
China evidently did more than emulate Japan’s post WW2 economic miracle, now it too is rapidly becoming a wealthy and sophisticated manufacturing nation. Companies like Midea, Xiaomi, Huawei, & Ying Li Solar are a few examples of Chinese brands that are trusted and stand equally alongside global peers. This was unimaginable just a decade ago as Chinese products were perceived as being cheap and unreliable. Very soon, all these brands should join other global brands in scouting for a new manufacturing destination…Or so we’re told (over & over again).
Factors such as good governance and policy reforms can be gauged too paint a picture of how trends could evolve over time, as most of the forward looking economic forecasts reveal. The dark horse we in Africa are missing when swallowing whole such “demographic dividend” reports, is technology. Factors such as Moore’s law dictate that every 18 months, computing power doubles. In the backdrop of the USA landing a man on the moon with the same computational power as a modern day calculator, 2050 presents a whole different ball game. Machines and Artificial intelligence are rapidly taking over.
Mobile phones were almost non-existent 20 years ago, today they’re more powerful and “much smaller” than the first super computers. In Africa, they were only for the wealthy 10 years ago, today +600 million people have them. They’re cameras, voice recorders, shopping assistants and just about any utility. If a popular saying is anything to go by, “there’s an app for that”. That’s the power and supersonic effect of technology, it emerges and takes over life as we know it, rapidly. Just two years ago, the cloud was a western luxury, today my company, starting up in Africa, cannot exist without it. Getting back to 2050; the big question is what will technology look like, how will it impact all these wonderful reports about an African manufacturing revolution and the plethora of natural resources we Africans love to brag about?
Machines will replace human beings for a majority of economic processes. Wheat could very well be harvested from fields, transported to factories, processed and mixed, baked into bread and delivered to homes with very little human intervention. The same will apply to clothing, electronics, and just about every consumer class imaginable. 35 years worth of Moore’s law could very well result in flying cars and the automation of EVERYTHING as the following charts from Google’s Chief Scientist , visionary behind Singularity, and acclaimed futurist, Ray Kurzweil, reveal:
A leading Silicon Valley investor, once stated that “software is eating the world”. The chart above reveals just how much so as IT’s share of the global economy breaches the 10 percent mark.
Super Computer Power is expected to match Human Brain Neural Simulation by 2025. 25 years later machines could run EVERYTHING.
Less humans and more machines are leading to increased productivity, an ugly reality for employment creation. With the advent of 3D printers, machines made by other machines will be in every home, “manufacturing anything” to order.
If Africa is reactive, the diagrams above are nothing short of a nightmare. Approximately 2.4 billion African people will live in a world that is totally beyond their control (as will the rest of the world). The demographic dividend we’re so fond of playing up, will turn into a vicious beast that can spark chaos and instability as most blue collar and white collar jobs vanish. With robots churning out goods and processing services, it would seem as if there’s not much to be done. But what if Africa were to fast track it’s economic targets NOW and increasingly shift the focus on developing its internal markets.
The vision that Africa’s founding fathers bore of a continental free trade Area & of optimising Intra African Trade are not only important but essential building blocks to increased competitiveness. The jobs needed to avert a doomsday scenario and transform Africa, can be achieved by developing internal capacities. At the risk of being controversial, progressive protectionism will also cushion the continent from unfair competition as China and Japan successfully instituted. Boosting Intra -African trade and limiting the impact of the machines could provide the continent with a great window of opportunity. For this to be achieved, bold leadership is required. The UN Economic Commission For Africa has already identified Intra African Trade as an essential pillar for African markets to mature, citing the fact that Africa’s exports to the rest of the world have little value addition, whilst African exports internally are of significantly higher value.
Everything Africa’s 2 billion people will require can be found, serviced or produced in any one of it’s 54 states. Failing to boost intra African Trade is asking for trouble, lots & lots of it. The machines are coming, be prepared.
By Clinton Mutambo, the founder & Chief Esajan at Esaja.com.
