Chapter Seven - Natural Resources and the Re-domestication Value Addition in Africa

Summary

Introduction

The African continent is long known to be endowed with a wide range of natural resources as noted in Chapters Two and Four. But using these ‘gifts of nature’ as a source of sustained economic growth and improved well-being for African people has been a challenge for the past six centuries. Prior to the colonisation of the continent, Africans in different parts of the continent exploited the rich natural resources to build thriving civilisations. There is now ample evidence of thriving African civilisations with advanced crop and livestock farming activities and metal works, particularly Iron and bronze since the fifth and fourth centuries BC (Davidson, 1966). During this time, African resources were used for the benefit of Africans who transformed the available natural resources into tools needed for production as well as final goods for consumption.

In other words, the process of value addition was localised, with little value leaking out. It has been observed that before the process of extracting significant surplus value from the continent was initiated by Europeans, the exploitation of natural resources and value addition were all domesticated. During this time, African societies were at par with societies in other parts of the world and maintained their political and economic sovereignty (Amin, 1972). It was when the continent started to lose one of its critical resources – human capital, that it gradually lost its ability to use its abundant natural wealth for the benefit of its peoples. The loss of control over what happened to natural wealth on the continent eventually led to the loss of economic and political sovereignty, culminating in the colonisation of the continent. The establishment of colonial regimes in Africa further entrenched the mechanism by which African natural wealth was extracted for the benefit of people outside of the continent.

The main channel through which Africa's economic sovereignty is undermined is the export of raw materials, which entails that the bulk of value addition and the capture of value added occurs outside of the continent. This process was entrenched during colonial rule but has continued to the present, leading to a situation where though the continent is abundantly endowed with natural resources it has remained the most impoverished region on the planet.