Opinion Piece by Tang Li
The world is opening up, and in areas where nobody expected it to. A former colleague has, for example, found the joys of driving a jeep made by Mahindra Automotive. This is a revelation in as much as India didn’t get manufacturing in the same ways that the Chinese didn’t get software.
Africa, for example, is also producing music as well as natural resources. We cannot stop hungry people from getting the things we take for granted. One of the best ways to commit financial suicide would be to willingly become a prisoner of our parent’s worldview.
I have started watching a reality show called “Young, Famous and African,” on Netflix. As the title of the show illustrates, this is a reality show based around Africans, who are exceedingly wealthy, young, and famous. The show is shot primarily in Johannesburg, South Africa.
However, the participants in the show are not limited to South Africa. The show’s power couple is from Nigeria, and one of the more colourful characters is from Tanzania. Think of this as Africa’s answer to “Bling Empire.”
This show is what you’d call an eye-opener, and hopefully one that will open the rest of us to the opportunities available in a world of increased nationalism and Covid restrictions. If you talk to enough people in Singapore and beyond, you’ll find that their image of Africa is limited to a single, monolithic block filled with starving black people being screwed by dictators mollycoddled by China.
Whilst much of Africa is poor and filled with starving people ruled over by some of the worst brutes in history, there are parts of Africa that are growing their wealth. Whilst the middle class in Sub-Saharan Africa remains small compared to many parts of the world, the fact remains, there is such a thing known as a “Consumer Market” in Africa and wealth is being created outside what is considered the only economic activity in Africa (looting natural resources) – the participants in this show, for example, money are made from movies and music.
Seeing a “Prosperous” Africa is a powerful reminder to the rest of us that the world that we grew up in is changing. Singapore like the other Asian Tigers (Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea) got rich by manufacturing more cheaply and selling to the developed world of the West and Japan. Wealth was generated in one part of the world, and the rest of the world acted as a contractor. Hence, the early development of Asia was in the manufacturing of “cheap” goods.
However, things have changed since then. The developing Asian giants of China and India disrupted this model of development. China’s economy went from USD178 billion (smaller than Canada, Spain, and Brazil – let alone Germany and Japan) to USD 14.72 trillion (Only the USA has a larger economy and the talk is about when rather than if China becomes the world’s largest economy).
Suddenly, the world economy had a few more engines and economic prosperity in the developing world has brought along social changes. French cognac producers, for example, no longer kick up a fuss when people mix cognac with soft drinks. The reason is simple – the largest market for cognac is Asia or more superficially China, which is filled with people who mix their cognac.
Furthermore, the traditional model of development has changed. Innovation, for example, used to be regarded as a uniquely Western thing, with a lot of economic growth in the developing world coming from people bringing Western things into Asia. This is strictly speaking no longer true.
China, which had a brand name in low-end manufacturing, is trying to get rid of low-end manufacturing and high-end technology companies like Tencent and Alibaba. The mid-tier Indian companies that did things cheaper than their Western counterparts make the distinction of being “product” companies that create things rather than do things cheaper.
This is not to say that developing countries are the cure all for everything. Just as China and India have a middle class bigger than most countries have people, the vast majority in both places live in awful poverty. Americans in particular needed to be reminded that China will only be the largest economy because it has more people.
Even when China becomes the largest economy in the world, the average American will be more prosperous than the average Chinese. Migration flows will continue to flow out of developing countries. As has been pointed out, the American-Born Chinese (ABCs) still call themselves Americans of Chinese descent rather than Chinese with American passports.
I’m not saying that dealing with people from the less developing world is going to be easy. However, the point is that the developing world is actually developing, which means opportunities in a variety of industries are being created.
A version of this article first appeared at beautifullyincoherent.blogspot.com
World’s 22 richest men have more than all women in Africa: Oxfam