Africa's Rising Cities – How Africa will become the center of the world’s future

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2021/africa-cities/

by vavooom • 5 years ago

42 5 5 years ago

nyokodo• 5 years ago

Africa’s geography isn’t likely to produce a super power so as to make the continent the “center of humanity’s future” at least in terms of the center of power. The lack of fertile farmland, lack of navigable rivers, lack of deep water ports, lack of self sustainable regional security, and general difficulty getting goods to markets is going to leave Africa seriously capital poor. That is, unless there is some technological development that turns off the geographic disadvantages.

If trends continue then it will exceed Asia as the most populous continent, but, due to the lack of capital it will also suffer a severe brain drain as regions with excess capital scoop up the best and the brightest to augment their falling or stagnant populations.

pythonic_hell• 5 years ago

The lack of fertile farmland, lack of navigable rivers, lack of deep water ports, lack of self sustainable regional security, and general difficulty getting goods to markets is going to leave Africa seriously capital poor.

Do you have spruces to back up these claims?

aaron695• 5 years ago

It's the geography, not the fact they have the worst corruption in the world - https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2020/index/cod

OP's point is totally off topic to the article, the actual article title is - "How Africa will become the center of the world’s urban future"

Africa's cities are big already and they will keep climbing. There's no reason to doubt this, they can support large cities, that's easy, it just won't be pretty.

No one is claiming they will be any sort of "Super power". Technology would have to change things in a big way for that to be true. Everyone getting drones in Africa isn't going to help with stability any time soon. OP is strawmanning it.

FooBarBizBazz• 5 years ago

I'm not sure I buy everything he says, but it might be worth finding a Peter Zeihan talk, if you haven't heard one before. That'll at least introduce you to these arguments.

Unless this was a tree joke I missed.

namlem• 5 years ago

Human capital far outstrips natural capital in terms of value. Geography has some importance obviously, and Africa does face significant risk due to warming from climate change.

What is really needed in Africa is infrastructure, more advanced education, and access to credit and investment capital. One good thing Africa has going for it is free trade between African Union countries. Access to such a large market is certainly a boon to potential businesses. Though language barriers can be a challenge.

Africa's Rising Cities – How Africa will become the center of the world’s future

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