Re: Changing Geography Of Oppourtunities..
A Random African is guest posting, he has some comments about my post The Changing Geography of Oppourtunities. He feels some of my assumption are probably naiive or maybe even untrue. Give it up for the Random African.
Re: Changing Geography of Oppourtunities...
So here's a quick semi-drunk draft of the "wrong things":- the focus on India is quite interesting. As far as I know China is growing faster and other Asian countries are doing quite good. So why India ? (i have my bet but let me see what you say)- How Nigeria has easier than India ? now seriously, how ?
So here's a quick semi-drunk draft of the "wrong things":- the focus on India is quite interesting. As far as I know China is growing faster and other Asian countries are doing quite good. So why India ? (i have my bet but let me see what you say)- How Nigeria has easier than India ? now seriously, how ?
India is 10 times bigger, always has a more developed agriculture, a more advanced industrial sector, has an unequal but semi-efficient education system, a better judicial system and far clearer propriety rights. What Nigeria has, as a country to invest in than India hasn't ? Oil ?- What exactly happened in India over the past 20 years ? Well, it's fairly simple: liberalization. Tata which is still the biggest Indian company is more than a hundred years old. And has been owned and operated by that family since creation. There was no privatization to botch, just regulations to withdraw. That means two things: India has been having a local private industrial sector for a long while (yeah rural India is backwards but some sector have been advanced since the colonial period) in India the end of socialist/protectionist policies just meant "get rid of the laws". Nigeria has neither.Actually as a continuation of the "liberalization" vs "privatization" argument. You talk about planning. Long Term, Strategic Planning. Didn't India take off when they actually STOPPED planning ? How do you plan free markets ?- on the issue of low costs: Are low costs possible in an oil economy ? Forget the corruption, are low costs even possible in a country that gets such amounts of free money ? I mean be it through hiring, investing or dumbly spending, the government WILL spend. And that will create inflation. Unless you go Norway but I doubt that would happen (as i see a reference to public-private partnerships).- but here's the most important thing: there is all kind of economic theories about cheap labor and industrialization and they all start with an increase of productivity of the agriculture that makes the peasants move. India has/had it partly because of semi-feudal rural structure but mostly because of their green revolution. How high is the agricultural productivity in Nigeria (or anywhere in Africa north of the Zambeze) ? How is outsourcing services to a country with 70% of rural people, no industry, very low productivity (don't get me started on African productivity), a failed education system gonna work ? basically who is gonna work in call centers (or sweatshops).
Do you think Random African is right? I will be back my own observations.
4Comment(s):
"Forget the corruption, are low costs even possible in a country that gets such amounts of free money ? I mean be it through hiring, investing or dumbly spending, the government WILL spend." True! Inflation is always a factor. In Nigeria the poor seeing how the rich make money and spend easily always tend to follow through the trend of pursuing money and not opportunities.
its really a challenge to overcome..but i believe in random africa
it's more complicated than that, Naija Market.
Even assuming there's no corruption, that the government is perfectly clean, the oil money will still be there without much effort and something will have to be done with it.
Let's say that everybody decides the oil money will be spent on infrastructure. roads, telecom or whatever.
Well, even with transparent corruption-free bidding processes, there will be enough incentives for entrepreneurs and workers to participate in that.
And that's entrepreneurs and workers who aren't working in other sectors. And that's driving the wages up, often unnecessarily.
Add to that how unlikely it is that productivity could go up and you have a problem.
The solution could be to "go Norway" and limit the amount of oil revenue in the budget but that would be highly unpopular.
Obinwanne: I agree, the challenges are just challenges. I just believe that it's better to know how big the challenge really is in order to overcome it.
I am going to have to come back and comment cos I need to read both posts, dig a little and then be able to share my views and opinions.
I still feel we need to pick some things off of India.