By Tororiro Isaac Chaza THE late former South African President Nelson Mandela once said, “Massive poverty and obscene inequality are such terrible scourges of our times — times in which the world boasts breathtaking advances in science, technology, industry, and wealth accumulation — that they have to rank alongside slavery and apartheid as social evils.”
Contrast Mandela’s words with those of Claus Schwab, chairperson of World Economic Forum explaining the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR).
He said: “We stand on the brink of a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work and relate to one another. In its scale, scope and complexity, the transformation will be unlike anything humankind has experienced before. We do not yet know just how it will unfold, but one thing is clear: the response to it must be integrated and comprehensive, involving all stakeholders of the global polity, from the public and private sectors to academia and civil society.”
This is an apt description of a VUCA (vulnerable, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) environment.
We are in the 4IR era in which information and communication technologies (ICTs) play a catalytic role for any disruptive and developmental strategies at global, regional, national, corporate, and individual levels.
The 4IR has the potential of fueling unprecedented technology-centred growth globally. Yet, there are risks that need to be mitigated, especially for African economies, taking heed of Mandela’s words.
This article will review the achievements and risks of the previous industrial revolutions and project these into the 4IR.
Why is the 4IR, the 4IR? What are its opportunities and/or risks for Africa? Allow me to recap on the past industrial revolutions, 1IR, 2IR and 3IR as they pertain to the sub-Saharan African continent’s relationship with the West (Europe and USA).
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It is necessary to state outrightly that the review of the past industrial revolutions in this article shows a highly tempestuous and unbalanced relationship mostly instigated by, and in favour of the West, at the detriment of Africa’s development.
The First Industrial Revolution (1IR) started around mid-18th century (1760 onwards) with the invention of the steam engine, and the advent of mechanisation, supported by massive increase in coal production.
This revolutionised an agrarian society into a manufacturing society and also the steam locomotives and the steam ships became the mode of mass transportation of trade goods.
Manufacturing of military equipment and and industries such as textile manufacturing using the mechanised power also boosted the 1IR production.
Britain, motivated by military expansionism objective initially dominated this era, but the rest of Europe and the United States caught up by the mid-19th century. Slavery and its brutality flourished as Africans were forcibly captured and transported by the steam ships as far as the Caribbean, Brazil, and the USA, to fulfill the “labour” component of the factors of Europe-led production — land, labour and capital.
The Second Industrial Revolution, 2IR followed in the middle of the 19th century (1870) into early 20th century, which was marked by rapid industrialisation following the discovery of fossil fuels such as oil (petroleum and its various products) and gas, the development of the telegraph and advent of electricity. Steel production increased. The chemical industry grew, e.g. fertiliser production. Plastic was innovated and manufactured. The automobile was invented during this period. Railroads boomed. New machinery boosted manufacturing. World War 1 was fought using the advancement in weapon technology and mechanised transport systems on land, sea and air. The epicentre of 2IR was Europe and the USA.
Russia launched the first rocket into space in 1957, the Sputnik. The USA followed in 1958 with the Explorer. Thereafter, there was a rapid increase in satellites launched for dominance in telecommunications and broadcasting, among other motives.
Whilst slavery was abolished during the 2IR, perhaps because mechanisation replaced the need for mass human labour, colonisation ferociously kicked in with the “Scramble for Africa” penned in at the Berlin Conference in 1885.
At this conference, diplomats from 14 mainly European countries such as Britain, France, Germany, Portugal, and Belgium agreed to draw borders for forceful military occupation and exploitation of African labour, mineral and land resources. Ivory was also in demand. Note that there was no representation, nor consultation of any African at Berlin.
Railway lines were quickly built to support military dominance meant to protect and support the transportation of very large quantities of extractive minerals such as gold, iron, copper, and of agricultural produce.
Holocaust-like attrocities were committed against Africans in various countries, the most notorious being in Belgian Congo (modern -day Democratic Republic of Congo) where King Leopold II of Belgium killed 10 million civilians in what is known as the Congolese Genocide during Belgian colonisation, and German South West Africa (modern-day Namibia) where the German Monarch Kaiser Wilhelm II ironically resident in Berlin, approved the “Extermination Order” around 1904 meant to exterminate the indigenous people of Namibia.
Many more recorded and unrecorded atrocities were committed against sub-Saharan Africans to displace them from their land and make room for colonial settlers to freely mine and farm, thus fulfilling the “land, labour and capital” quest for economic production.
Radio made its debut in the early 1900s, followed by television and information became the tool for dominance in the 2IR. The television became commercially available in the mid 1930s. The advent of electronics television broadcasting and more advanced and mass production of the black and white television revolutionised the mass media. Telephone networks, mainly fixed, expanded using analogue technology.
The World War 2 (WW2), saw Allied Forces made up of Britain, France, United States, Russia and China fighting versus the Axis powers, Germany, Italy and Japan. This war was fought mainly to counter Germany’s quest for world dominance.
Amazingly, about half a million African soldiers were recruited by mainly Britain and France to fight in this war, in Tunisia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Europe, Burma and Japan. African civilians laboured to provide food and other material used in the war by the Allied Forces.
One commentator puts the dichotomy of Africa’s role in the WW2 this way, “Yet in 1945 the imperial powers had no intention of withdrawing from Africa regardless of their avowed commitment to self-determination. Quite to the contrary, they expected their African colonies to make substantial contributions to post-war European reconstruction. They, therefore, went to great lengths to play down African contributions to the Allied victory, which helps to explain why Africa and Africans are largely missing from grand narratives of the Second World War.”
Ironically the Axis powers, Germany, Italy and Japan, which were on the losing side of WW2, benefited greatly from post-war reconstruction programme, the Marshall Plan, financed and overseen by the Allies led by the USA. The African countries which fought on the side of the Allied Forces did not benefit much from the post war rebuild program, but instead contributed to the European rebuild through colonial taxes in the form of appropriated land, labour and capital.
Africa continued as a rich source of capital and resources, in terms of mineral wealth for the colonisers. However, decolonisation had begun as a great number of sub-Saharan African countries such as Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ghana, Mali, Togo, Senegal, Zambia, Malawi, Congo Brazzaville, Democratic Republic of Congo, Cameroon and many more gained independence from the colonial masters between 1958 and 1968.
The ruse, nonetheless, was to decolonise but maintain a full Nelson hold (a wrestling technique) on Africa’s economy through the trade of the rich African mineral and agricultural output. The full Nelson hold extended to Africa’s political, social, and education domains through powerful information and media sway. Debt unwittingly kept Africa economically “colonised” through the “well intentioned” Bretton Woods institutions, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
The advent of the Third Industrial Revolution, 3IR saw massive strides made in the information technology (IT) industry due to decreasing costs and increasing computing power of computer chips, all this powered by heightened entrepreneurship. This in turn fueled the rapid innovations and development in the ICT sector, hence the advent of the Internet, which is now the dominant communications media for emails, social media, ecommerce, etc.
As industrialisation grew, increased use of fossil fuels and plastics began to pollute the atmosphere, resulting in climate change. There is a significant correlation between the size of the economy and the size of CO2 emissions. For instance, six of the largest 10 economies are also in the top 10 polluters, with the USA and China leading the pack in both pollution and economic size.
Nuclear energy came into the scene in the 1950s, and now contributes 10+% to the world’s electricity.
For Africa, 3IR is epitomised by a statement from Kwame Nkrumah, the first Prime Minister of Ghana, formerly the Gold Coast under British colonial rule. He said: “Yet all stock exchanges in the world are pre-occupied with Africa’s gold, diamonds, uranium, platinum, copper, and iron ore. We have been too busy nursing our separate States to understand fully the basic need of our union, rooted in common purpose, common planning and common endeavour.”
Africa was partitioned into 54 small States at colonisation and this was maintained after decolonisation. This rendered Africa to be politically and economically weak as each country had to play to the political tune of the former coloniser who remained master. Those who did not play to the tune were starved of foreign direct investments and hence suffered stunted growth.
In particular, the West made an example out of Zimbabwe by imposing sanctions on trade as a result of its land reform policies regarding redistribution of 50 million acres highly fertile land back to the majority locals, previously displaced into only 20 million acres of less fertile land.
We are now in the era termed 4IR seemingly epitomised by equality and hyper development of IT-based technologies, which are cloud computing, quantum computing, genetic engineering, drone technology, artificial intelligence, machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT), driverless vehicles, blockchain, cyber-security, 3D printing and many more. All these technologies are likely to dominate government and corporate strategies centred on digital transformation and digital maturity, right up to the end of and beyond the decade.
The advent of COVID-19 has highlighted the need for a new norm encompassing e-government, e-learning, e-health, e-commerce, work-from-home, and other Internet based services. This has begun to dominate the political and economic environment.
In the 2011-2020 decade, the global economic front went through some major disruptions with China becoming the biggest exporter ousting the United States from the lead position. The rise of China as an economic giant is quite fascinating. A bar graph illustration on the top 15 exporting countries shows that in the 60s to 80s United States and Europe dominated the top economies charts, with South Africa in the top 15 too. Only Japan featured from the Far East and Asian countries, and was joined by Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea in the mid-80s to mid-90s.
China only entered the mix at the bottom around the mid 90s, but steadily rose to number nine by the beginning of the 2001-2010 decade. United States maintained lead position all this time. But by 2004, there was a rapid shift as China displaced most of the major European exporters to become number four after United States, Germany and Japan. Most of these exports were technology lead.
China relentlessly pushed ahead and became number two exporter by 2010 and entered the 2011-2020 decade in that position after the United States. In 2013, China took over as the number one exporter, a position that is likely to continue with possibly a widening gap in the lead. It is back to the Ming (China) dynasty which was one of the largest economies in the 1600s.
Among China’s top exports listed are computers, broadcasting equipment, telephones, office machine parts, integrated circuits, textiles optical and medical equipment. This is dominated by ICT and electrical machinery technologies. Chinese ICT tech giants include Tencent, Huawei, ZTE, Alibaba, TikTok, Xiaomi, Baidu and many more. Of course US-based Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook etc, are still the tech giants for now.
Former President of the United States Donald Trump was non-plussed for the United States being elbowed out of the lead position by China and, therefore, started a trade war aimed at weakening the Chinese dominance by imposing punitive tariffs on Chinese imports. On the technology front, security was used as the reason for banning ZTE and Huawei exports into the United States in the race for 5G dominance. Furthermore, Trump banned American investors from investing in other Chinese companies such as Xiaomi, a threatening handset manufacturer, siting links to the Chinese military. The trade war is being reviewed and carefully rolled back under Joe Biden.
The risks for Africa are many in the 4IR. Firstly, the digital divide where access to basic communications and the Internet is still difficult or non-existent for rural Africans and perhaps costly for urban Africans. In terms of access devices. Secondly, Africa is a consumer not a developer of most of the hardware, software apps and available content at the moment. Africa, therefore, buys or pays for devices, network infrastructure, software licenses, content. There are no tech giants the likes of Microsoft, Google or Apple yet in Africa.
Content becomes the battlefront resource as for instance most content in news, films, TV series, and social media are based on the cognitive bias of the presenting culture, and this is dominated by Western culture and influence. The Western norms then become ingrained as the world standard to the detriment of the norms of the smaller and disunited African countries. Mis-information, disinformation, and malinformation rule the information industry. African countries have very little control on what is reported about them and are at the mercy of the dominant content providers.
Trade and economic development are still prevailing factors in global political and economic dominance. Statistics reveal a gross imbalance among the economic regions. For instance, Africa, with 1.3 billion population is the second largest continent, yet economically the continent’s gross domestic product (GDP) is only US$ 2.6 trillion. Compared to the USA with a population of 338 billion and GDP of US$23 trillion, or with France with a population of 65,4 million and GDP of US$ 2,94 trillion. China stands at 1,45 billion population and GDP of US$ 17,7 trillion.
Closing the economic gap will require a seismic shift in thinking within Africa itself in terms of being a united front in both politics and the economics of trade. For instance, currently African intra-trade stands at 17% only, compared to African trade with Europe at 34%. and with China 14%. The promotion of innovation and intra-trade within the African continent becomes of the essence, hence the need to elevate the role of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and intensify its impact beyond its current engagement. This entails African States working together in areas such as promotion of trade, regional peace, anti- corruption drive (#PayBackTheMoney), Afro-centric definition of democracy, Afro-centric information content, education, and innovation in science related fields, e.g. Afro-centric medicines, Afro-centric IT solutions, and Afro-centric energy solutions.
The topic of reparations for slavery, colonisation, genocides, racial abuse, and imbalanced trade has never been fully unpacked. Perhaps now is the time to engage in productive discourse on the topic of reparations as we embrace the 4IR. Taking cognissance of the complexity of calculating what the costs of slavery, colonisation, and wealth extraction were, a good start would be to return the value (#PayBAckTheMoney) of the pillaged land, labour, capital, and culture. These funds would purely be directed towards development in an environment in which the African leaders take responsibility to mitigate the risks of misrule and corruption.
There has been talk of a post- COVID-19 African Marshall Plan promoted by eminent persons such as Dambisa Moyo. Such a plan is a good start but needs to be further justified by urging Europe to see it as a payback for Africa’s contribution to European economic development through slavery, colonisation, wealth extraction and WW2 participation.
