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DCG 12 - Anglais appliqué aux affaires
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Annales SIEC 2019
The future is in Africa, and China knows it
Fast population growth offers some great investment opportunities, but the West is missing out.
During the past decade, China has been investing a lot of money in sub-Saharan Africa. Some Western observers worry
that this represents a new form of colonialism. Given the continent's history with European conquerors and rich countries
trying to cheaply exploit its natural resources, that suspicion is understandable. But [...] the new African investment bears
little resemblance to the colonialism of old.
Colonialism, and the pseudo-colonial exploitation that sometimes, followed independence, was mostly about extracting
natural resources (and sometimes slave labor). Although securing access to natural resources is surely one of China's
goals, its investments in Africa go beyond extractive industries. The sectors receiving the most Chinese money have been
business services, wholesale and retail, import and export, construction, transportation, storage and postal services, with
mineral products coming in fifth. In Ethiopia, China is pouring money into garment (1) manufacturing - the traditional
first step on the road to industrialization.
Receiving foreign investment isn't the only way that a country can industrialize. But as China itself has shown in dramatic
fashion during the past few decades, attracting foreign capital can be a key part of an effective growth strategy. When a
company from China - or the U.S., Japan, France or elsewhere - employs Africans to make clothes, program software or
build houses, African workers immediately share the benefits. This also provides income to local African entrepreneurs,
who create new businesses to sell things to the foreign companies and their employees.
And if countries are smart about appropriating foreign technology, it can lead to long-term productivity increases as
well. As Africans learn techniques, ideas, and tricks from foreign companies (and invent new ones themselves), they will
gain the leverage to capture an ever-bigger slice of the value that foreign investments create - and as their productivity
improves, that value will grow in size. [...]
Instead of standing on the sidelines and wringing (2) their hands over China's investments, Westerners and people in
other rich countries should be looking to copy or surpass China's efforts to tap the final frontier of emerging markets.
The biggest reason Africa will be important is population. Look up any map of total fertility rates, and you can easily see
that with a few scattered exceptions, sub-Saharan Africa is the only place where people still have large families. Though
family sizes will decrease as the continent becomes richer - this is already occurring - Africa is still expected to experience
much more population growth than anywhere else.
(1) Garment : piece of clothing
(2) To wring : tordre
From Bloomberg.com, September 21th, 2018.
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http://www.Bloomberg.com

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