Maravi

(HERALD) Africa deserves share in its wealth

Africa deserves share in its wealth
By Godwills Masimirembwa

THE stark reality that Africa faces is underdevelopment despite being endowed with minerals and huge tracts of fine agricultural land. Africa shares the one phenomenon of an impoverished rural population with no capacity to meaningfully participate in the economy. This is not accidental, but is a direct result of colonisation and the transnational corporations’ role of extractive outward looking policies.

The TNCs are least interested in initiating or participating in holistic agricultural and industrial development programmes that will result in the industrialisation of Africa, yet they own and control Africa’s vast resources.

Africa is home to millions of inhabitants with little or no purchasing power because of poverty.

Yet on a daily basis, TNCs extract minerals, raw materials and petroleum products from their lands and export the same to foreign lands.

Dividends, interest, consultancy and licensing fees are as outward bound as our minerals and raw materials.

We clutch at straws, while TNCs enjoy the fat of our lands.

Watch any African movie, cast in Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Zimbabwe etc, the underlying definition of a poverty-stricken continent is unmistakably evident.

Yes, there are centres of business activity such as Harare, Bulawayo, Lagos, Accra, Johannesburg, Durban, Cape town, Lusaka, Lilongwe, Nairobi etc, that process and authenticate the outward bound extractive activities of TNCs, but the evidence of the unjust reward system is evident in the squalid conditions and poverty workers live in.

Evidence of the foreignness of the profits is evident in the acute underdevelopment of areas barely 20 kilometres out of the processing and authenticating extractive outward bound centres of transnational capital.

Governments in Africa have dangled incentives to business, which are dominated by transnational firms and capital, to invest in growth points and rural areas.

The aim of African governments was and still remains to establish strong industrial bases in their countries to enable them to produce for both the domestic and export markets.

These efforts have come to naught because while African governments seek the development of their countries, TNCs seek the enrichment of foreign shareholders.

This contradiction of inward looking governments and outward looking TNCs in economics is the true basis of the impoverishment of Africa. TNCs thus become seekers of raw materials for processing in their industrialised countries of origin.

They also become the exporters to Africa of the finished products.

The profits earned are exported to the TNCs’ country of origin.

Africa remains poor in the midst of an abundance of resources.

Excuses for not investing in growth points and rural areas abound, such as lack of road network, communication, etc but let an opportunity to extract minerals arise there, and then you will see the true colours of the TNCs.

Extraction will be set in motion, but no investment in processing infrastructure will be put in place.

All talk of poor road networks or communication will disappear.

Such is the form and substance of transnational capital.

It will leave Africa bare.

It has no interest in facilitating the industrial transformation of Africa.

It has no interest in investing in industrial infrastructure for processing minerals and agriculturally based products.

There is, therefore, no hope that transnational firms will be the torchbearers in establishing a productive and integrated industrial and agricultural base in Africa.

After all, Africa is not their home.

But the slave trade should have taught us.

Despite the rich mineral base, slave monsters never came to settle.

They came to capture us, so that we became raw materials for their agricultural and industrial development.

Transnational capital, like slave monsters, will never be a part of us.

Thus, as we seek investment, Africans must be more inward looking. We must take control of the commanding heights of our economies, for Africa is our home.

Industrialisation beyond Harare, Bulawayo, Durban, Johannesburg, Cape town, Lilongwe, Lagos, Nairobi, etc. into growth points and rural areas, can only be championed by the indigenous business community, not by TNCs.

It was never on the agenda of colonial governments to industrialise the rural areas they created. Rural areas were in fact created as centres of impoverishment.

TNCs never ventured into industrialising rural areas even during colonial times. They were part of the system that impoverished Africans. They have not changed.

However, they will change once we take the commanding heights in the ownership of our resources.

Labels: DEVELOPMENT

posted by MrK @ 6:40 AM