Perspective on development in Africa... how to stop manufacturing poverty on an industrial scale

If you look at distribution of poverty thresholds in Sub Saharan Africa, you can see some regional disparities. In every region of the world you see that poverty has come down

everywhere except sub Saharan Africa, this was as highlighted In the gate keepers report. By 2050 85% of high poverty will be in sub Saharan Africa. Half of those will be in Nigeria and DRC.
One of the major drivers of poverty is population growth. Median projections show

that by 2100, Africa will cross the 2 billion mark. Fertility rates are some of the highest in the world, with Chad, Nigeria , Ghana leading the fray. If you look at these nations, there are regional disparities. If you look at Nigeria and Ghana, poverty rates in the north are

largely higher than the south. Across income levels, the poorest have the highest fertility rates. The education of girls is also a factor, the higher the level of education of girls, the lower birth rates. Figures of populations for northern Nigeria have been doubling since

1980 and you have twice as many people living there now than in 1980. They are living on the same land, same resources. Your farmlands have become houses, grazing routes have become farmlands and there is always conflict between herders and farmers.

THE ROLE OF FINANCE.
Today you have almost $17 trillion dollars packed in negative yielding bonds in the world. How do you get this amount into development into the world. We have to come up with innovations to get this capital. You have Senegal swap with standard bank etc.

these are small and we need to access larger of these amounts earning negative returns and Chanel them Into infrastructure, power agriculture etc.

China’s influence is declining. If you think of the United States after the Second World War, they had huge current account

surpluses. When these surpluses disappeared they stopped being lenders to the rest of the world. China has historically had huge surpluses, those surpluses are declining. In 2018, China ran a current account deficit for the first time in decades. China has also clearly

redefined its model and its going to focus on domestic consumption led growth , exports are no longer the growth driver when big markets like the USA are getting hostile. Domestic investments is not going to be a major driver because you actually have an investment bubble in

China. So you have Chinese capital flying out of China.

Global context is changing. In a trade war the countries that run the current account deficit is usually the winner and African countries are all running negative current account balances.

We need to move from informal agriculture to organized manufacturing to services. What do we need to do? We need a simple issue of coordination. Most gulf nations have a ministry of power and industry. We generate a lot of electricity and put it on the grid with no knowledge

whatsoever as to where it goes, those power needs to be going to special economic enclaves etc. Everyone is on the grid but most are not paying. You have the power but it is not powering the right sectors.

Chinese have understood that the old model has reached its limit.

You can’t continue to lend money to African countries to build roads from nowhere to nowhere and end up with bad debts that can’t be paid.