By Jerome-Mario Utomi
It is no longer news that recently, the Director-General of the Industrial Training Fund (ITF), Sir Joseph N. Ari, officially presented the ITF Mobile Android GSM smartphone to President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
The DG said at the presentation that the ITF mobile phone, which was comparable in quality to any other brand of Android phone in the world, was assembled by the ITF Model Skills Training Centre (MSTC), Abuja, as part of the implementation of the vision of the incumbent management of the ITF with particular emphasis on research and development.
The phone was produced with 100 per cent locally sourced material. It is proof that given the enabling environment and opportunities, Nigerians will unleash their creative potentials.
Definitely a cheerful development, but such joy easily gets abbreviated when one remembers that the shadows still linger of similar feeble attempts in the past which ended in shame.
There exists also new awareness that this challenge is by no means unique to Nigeria as a country but cuts across Africa. Ringing apprehension is that the continent is the second most populated in the world (1.2 billion people), yet, sadly represents only 1.4 per cent of the world manufacturing value-added in the first quarter of 2020.
This is further exacerbated by the fact that out of over 51 countries in Africa as a continent, only South Africa qualified as a member of BRICS, an acronym coined for an association of five major emerging national economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
This worrying concern about how offtrack Africa has gone in all facets of technological development and advancement recently came flooding during a conversation with C.N Oragwu, a former university academic in Physics, at his Lagos residence.
Aside from the fact that the conversion stems from both the title and partially formed the content of this piece, he (the host) during the conversation critically highlighted how his new book entitled; technology and wealth of nations, which is set for presentation to the public in July 2021, chronicled the slanted and unsustainable effort different African governments made in the past to bring their nations out of technological woods, as well as outlined the way forward.
There is also another distinction to make.
Similar to the construction of any business strategy, where it is acknowledged that three main players must be taken into account; the corporation itself, the customers and the competition-as each of these ‘strategic 3C’s which form the strategic triangle is a living entity with its own interests and objectives; but must be taken care of by any organization desirous of survival, likewise, the book is evident with some strategic antidotes that signals solutions to Africa’s hydra-headed and multi-faceted technological challenge. A fact that more than anything else qualifies it a must-read for policymakers in Nigeria and Africa as a continent.
The above is not the only explanation as he went ahead to make a further distinction.
Separate from thoughtfully and masterfully examining the inspirable relationship between technological development and economic progress of nations, the book, deftly argues with facts that the point of the sail of all economies is the introduction of the manufacturing sector or the industrial economy.
He establishes that Africa’s prolonged economic plight is centred on the two fundamental challenges of a manufacturing economy.
It traces Africa’s economic backwardness to its roots – a key problem that has kept our policymakers handicapped and our economies crippled.
With documented facts on the institutionalized crippling policies and organized sequences of stagnating events of the colonial masters, the author asks: why is it that Europe, which hosted the industrial revolutions in the 17th and 18th centuries, did not permit technological education in Africa in about 50 years of colonization, and prefers to send aids afterwards?
Of course, the above question in my view may not be lacking in merit considering the fact that Africa presently is dotted with projects built with aids from Europe, the United States of America (USA) and lately, China.
For a better understanding of this piece, let’s take a look at the Chinese development aid to Africa.
Going by reports, Chinese development aid to Africa totalled 47 per cent of its total foreign assistance in 2009 alone, and from 2000 to 2012 it funded 1,666 official assistance projects in 51 African countries. Also, the Brookings Institution Aid Data study found that at least 70 per cent of China’s overseas aid was sent to Africa from 2000 to 2014.
Some of these projects include but not limited to; the African Union building in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, which cost $200 million to build and was handed over in 2012. Recently also, China announced its willingness to give the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), a $31.6 million grant to build a new headquarters in Abuja, Nigeria.
China’s scarves have found their largest African market in Egypt, which imported supplies worth $45 million in 2014. The nations also have a healthy exchange of carpets, with multi-million dollar supplies travelling in both directions. – Dozens of African hospitals have been built with Chinese funds in recent years. China’s largest commitments in Africa are to infrastructure projects, such as Nigeria’s $8.3 billion Lagos-Kano rail line, largely funded through Chinese loans.
Whatever the true situation may be, I believed and still believe that there exists something troubling technologically that characterizes Africa more as a dark continent.
More so, looking at the current happenings and commentaries within the continent, it is obvious that fair-minded and well-foresighted Africans are in support of the position as conversed by the book. In fact, many have at different times and places argued that though Africans may have overtly shown remarkable improvement in their culture and civilization.
That notwithstanding, the fact that after almost 60 years of independence, African countries continually look up to China for aid, covertly tells a story of a continent lacking in capacity for taking responsibility for its actions and initiatives for values.
On the way out of the continent’s technological debacle and the current wealth disparity among nations (industrial and industrial economies), let’s again cast a glance at what the book is saying.
It (the book) argues that the current wealth disparity among nations (industrial and industrial economies) represented by highly industrialized Europe, North America and Japan on one hand and most developing (non-industrial economies) countries, in particular, those in sub-Saharan Africa, on the order is primarily the difference in the technical capability and capacity to produce and manufacture modern technologies and to use the technologies to produce and manufacture globally competitive industrial goods and to sustain the commanding tasks of science and technology in the economy
The disparity it added, has since considerably widened and will continue to widen as long as the developing countries depend almost totally on industrial nations for the technologies and industrial inputs they need to sustain their economies.
Consequently, the only way to bridge the wealth gap is for the developing countries of the world to build their domestic endogenous capabilities and capacities to produce modern technologies and competitive industrial goods in their own economies, he concluded.
Catalysing the process will again necessitate African leaders borrowing bodies from Asian tigers in order to raise Africa’s industrial soul. They need to analyse and understand the essential ingredients of foresight in leadership and draw a lesson on how leadership decision-making processes involve judgment about uncertain elements and differ from the pure mathematical probability process. To find out why Asia after grappling with the problems of unemployment in the region, their leaders came to the conclusion that the only way to survive was to industrialize.
Finally, Sir Joseph N. Ari may be right in his claim that in terms of quality and performance, our phone is comparable or even superior to most Android phones currently in our markets, however, it important to underline that for us to succeed, there are certainly an infused lesson policymakers in Nigeria/Africa must draw from the above explanations.
Jerome-Mario Utomi is the Programme Coordinator (Media and Public Policy), Social and Economic Justice Advocacy (SEJA), Lagos. He could be reached via [email protected]/08032725374.
