You can’t really compare an entire continent to individual countries. Countries in Africa are developing very differently. Rwanda and Botswana are really on their way up and are genuinely on the road to prosperity, the fate of Nigeria, Kenya, and Ethiopia is still a hit or miss, South Africa is sliding backwards, and…let’s not talk about Chad, the Sudans, or Somalia.
You can’t really but it’s impressive considering Africa has been dealing with tyrants and unstable governments along with civil wars and genocide for decades while China after uniting had no problems apart from a bad economy for a while
@@Prideium9001 not true, china is a national security state, it lies for its national security, we really dont know what s going on in china, except by the numbers. because facts dont lie
@@Prideium9001 The main reason of the instability is because the vast majority of countries and borders were arbitrarily drawn by Europeans. I mean, if one day, out of nowhere, you put French, English and Italian people in one territory and tell them to share it equally, guaranteed war will break out in a few years. Now do the same, but quadruple the number of different groups, a you get your average African country.
@@klausunder8876 biafraud rebels getting gunned down maybe. Or most likely when buhari leaves office and some rando easterner is elected they'll shut up.
I feel the “demographic dividend” is more of a demographic loan. We’ve seen it in Japan, and we’re starting to see it else where; eventually those who were propping up the low dependency rate grow old, and this causes the dependency rate to shoot up as they never had the children to replace them
The reason for Japan's decline is very different matter. The reason for Japan's surge wasn't due to demographic dividend (not saying it was a none factor but just not the main reason). It was the Japanese governments policy they implemented at the time to boost development of companies. Companies during that era gave out research funding as if it was candy during that time and lead to a short term but accelerated boost to their economy and now that has caught up with them. As for the aging population of Japan. It is the culture that is causing the issue. Japan is very very anti-immigration, and as we all know immigration for a developed country is the only way to have a rising or stable population. (plus the younger population in Japan aren't exactly treated well so they aren't really keen on making their lives harder by having children)
Most of Africa misses the most important part to economic prosperity tough: political stability. As you mentioned that's partially because of the resouce curse.
True, many companies and governments will invest billions or even trillions into genocidal dictators so long as they provide stability in the economy and politically. Mao kill more people then Hitler but the west handed him a UN security council seat and trillions in investment because he created stability and agreed to keep his genocides quiet unlike that rabble rouser hitler who had to get noisy
@@kevinwilliam2356 We have literally seen the resource curse operate within the West in places like the Netherlands and UK. It is far more than a Western Exploitation thing.
That has changed dramatically. Although there are still some basket cases, many countries like Rwanda, Malawi, Ethiopia, Botswana, Zambia are not. They are very stable and are on the verge of breaking into the first world club relatively soon.
@@dirremoire don't be ridiculous, they have a GDP of about 2% per capita of a first world western country... And those are the better African countries.
@@xpusostomos I kinda disagree. South africa absolutely had the resources and the potential to grow even bigger than it became during the apartheid era. But economic mismanagement because of post apartheid politics caused the south african economy to rapidly decline. I would know, I saw it happen in real time
@@feargripper look up any history book regarding the "wests" actions in Africa. Heck you don't even have to look that far back to see why we don't buy your BS. Look most of us generally don't give AF about your dick measuring contest with China, we just want to develop our economies and live better lives. If that way be through chinese investments then so be it.
@@tobilobaokorodudu9594 did I say that western nations didn’t exploit the entire world from the 1800s onwards, no. Dude look at my pfp, do you think I’m an ignorant bitch. No super power has and never will be fair and just, regardless of what their ideology states.
@The Yangem yeah but we're supposed to buy your criticism when you're literally still doing the same thing. Atleast one deal gets us tangible benefits. The other just brings covert destabilisation and regime changes
Grouping Africa as a whole was a fatal error for an otherwise well researched video. Even if you mentioned it, you continued to make the same mistake as the media does. Had you focused on regions, say West Africa, South Africa or East Africa, it would have made more sense.
I agree. At least, the least they could do is separate Sub-Saharan Africa from the North. For example, Tunisia and DR Congo are at the polar opposites.
Yup, grouping sub-Saharan Africa with the rest of the continent is very misleading. Northern Africa is much more developed than sub-saharan Africa, so it makes those statistics look much more promising than they really are. That region is culturally, economically and geographically too different from the rest of the continent for it to be useful to look at them as a whole.
@@fullmetaltheorist It's roughly simmilar to north Africa in that sense. But development of the country is not the only factor when looking at whether or not a particular grouping of countries is useful or not. Putting sounthern African countries into the same group as central African countries is a kind of a simplification, but it still makes much more sense than putting northern African ones together with central African ones.
Raise your hand if the “Rules for Rulers” video by CPG Grey made it painfully obvious what one big contributing factor was to resource economies not leading to economic development
I’m African, Nigerian to be precise. In my opinion, the most important factors holding the continent back economically are socio-cultural ones. Systemic corruption especially is a major problem. Also a paucity of outstanding leaders continent wide to lead the charge has been a challenge; Africa largely lacks true leaders.
colonialism hasn’t changed unfortunately but the biggest difference is that china is also trying to interfere in the african nations too now otherwise though europe and china and us are meddling in africa and the african leaders are being bribed
If it could get a few stable, strong and wealthier members countries to push it and to push for the kind of integration that the EU has with structural funds, etc. then it could succeed and probably do a better job than China in terms of balance of human rights and economic development.
Depends on how long it takes Xi to colonize african states and invest in their economies. Once African companies have skyrocketing revenue that stays in the Chinese allied minority their colonies GDP will skyrocket on paper and Africa will finally be civilized and prosperous
Hopefully if they pull it off they can keep Chinas hands off Vietnams strings, because theres nothing the CCP wants more than to operate their neighbors governments like a puppet. They created a vast empire of tributary states once and they're already turning african states and asian states into colonies. I hope the west and other Asian countries open up more to vietnam
I feel like this falls apart at the equivalence of an African economy to a European econony. Europe is referenced as a single economy because of the EU, not because of its geography. There is no (effective) African Union. What goes on in Egypt hardly affects South Africa or even Nigeria. In fact, North Africa is often considered a seperate entity, so it's already odd to group it into an arbitrary "Africa". The question is asked like "will Africa be the next China" but is presented as "Will Africa become developed". Africa cannot be the next China, it isn't ruled by one power. Will Africa become developed? Probably, but just like the Eastern vs Western Europe, its unlikely to be even. This video is answering a question it asked itself. And I think it's flawed. The grouping of Africa as one singular entity is the mistake made by colonizers hundreds of years ago, no reason to make that again in our modern day and age.
@@Mark-Wilson Yes, and I still object to the choice of words. Sub-saharan Africa would be more appropriate, as the economy of Morocco is basically more interlinked with a country like Spain than let's say Mauritania, Chad or Cameroon
You're right that Africa will never be looked at as a single geopolitical player the way China or the EU is, but Europe absolutely would still be considered a single economic region even without the EU, like Southeast Asia is and will continue to be regardless of how fully it develops. (Also- yes if European countries didn't trade with each-other much it would weaken the argument for considering them one economic region, but this idea is too unlikely to be worth considering. They still would trade with each other extensively even without the EU. Look to the fact that Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia already have regional trade blocs. Countries will always trade with their closest neighbors most, and when they are of similar size their economies will become interdependent.)
You are missing the most important factor in development: Politics. China, for the most part, has a strong bureaucracy and provides a (relatively) stable environment for investors. Much of Africa, unfortunately, is plagued by instability, a corrupt or weak bureaucracy, and internal divisions. This is reflected in most countries faring significantly worse on the ease of doing business, corruption perception, and fragile states indices. Those African countries that fare (relatively) well on those indicators, like Botswana, Ghana, or (to a lesser degree) Namibia, have seen or are seeing some solid economic growth.
The bottom line 1. Africa’s economic indicators follow 20-year-ago China’s, which seems promising 2. But, its demographic ones are still far behind that of China, due to lack of education and high dependency rate 3. The most straightforward way to solve this problem is reinforcing the edication 4. In the end, some African countries, if not all, might succeed in becoming the next China
#2 and #3 are the exact same. They've never had #1 and #2, and they never will. Have you ever made the connection between diverse ethnic groups sharing the same land being a source of tension and conflict?
Africa is cursed by natural resources. Nigerian elites are selling their oil to French tycoon to get rich instead of hiring Nigerian engineers to process it domestically. Botswana's future's looking bright though
I can see what you mean! However, I think 'implode' would be the more common word to mean collapse. Just like how a booming economy means it's doing well.
The next Africa is going to be Africa . It is totally wrong and misleading talking about a huge continent as one single country ....not only we are talking about several countries with totally different economical system but also with little to no interdependency or infrastructures that link these countries together , with the exception may e of eastern Africa ...western Africa is dominated by Nigeria , southern Africa is dominated by South Africa ...North Africa is totally different from the rest of the continent and is more linked to Europe and the middles east than to the rest of the sub Saharan Africa.
I had high hopes for Ethiopia but that conflict in the tigray has definitely shaken my faith. It feels like every time an African country is poised to develop, it gets completely undermined
Because as the video notes, we concentrate on big development infrastructure projects that don't have a meaningful impact on the lives of the common man and most importantly, we fail to address ethnic/clan differences that have existed for decades or as in the case of Ethiopia, centuries...
What you forgot is a stable political and justice system (and security). Foreign Direct Investment will not increase (atm Africa has a net outflow even with foreign aid), unless it investors can be certain they have rights and there are rules. And it is somewhat secure (less risk compared to other investment targets to put up a plant, eg in India or Turkey or Vietnam or Mexico etc etc).
@@SarionFetecuse Your oblique method of analysing for an example of a successful Black-led country is pathetic. Africa has had many successful empires and kingdoms over the years. It geographic location and climate has been a curse for the continent, which is a debilitating factor that both Europeans and the Chinese have not had for one. But hark back to a time when Europe was a back-water. In the earliest civilisations of the ancient period of human history, North Africa was more advanced than Mediterranean Europe and far more advanced than non-Mediterranean Europe. Yet today the opposite relationship is observed (Non-Mediterranean Europe is also more advanced than Mediterranean Europe today too). So the question that would’ve been asked back then was “name a successful European civilisation?”. Then eventually Rome happened, but that too eventually came to an end and the Caliphates of the Fertile Crescent once again outstripped Europe in science and culture. Granted sub-Saharan Africa has had a poorer performance than the North pretty much through the entirety of history, but again I quote the geographic difficulties of the sub-Sahara and also point out Botswana and Gabon as two exceptional sub- Saharan African countries on the mainland that are growing at high rates and have eliminated so much poverty. Then you have the Seychelles, Cabo Verde and São Tomé & Principe as examples of coastal island nations that have seen very high economic and social progress. Meanwhile during all of the this, China and India were either keeping par with North Africa’s advances or surpassing them. And Europeans passing them out was an aberration to the normal course of history, but now they are both on a significant growth path and catching up. So I ask you “Gudsang”, what the f**k are you on about? 🧐
I don’t see any devices Americans use saying “Made in Africa” but I certainly see a lot made from China, India, Japan, Korea and occasionally some Asian countries we went to war with or had operations in like Philippines, Vietnam, etc. What tech is being made in Africa that changes how we do anything or is better in any way than something already on the market?
This was interesting, but I'm wondering if you considered the impact of debt and IMF structural adjustment programs. I think one of the reasons that so many countries in Africa court foreign direct investment and don't always prioritize education is because, under SAPs they are required to decrease public spending and encourage foreign investment. I don't think China faced the same limitation
SAPs or structural adjustment programs refer to short-term debt relief issued to highly-indebted countries by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) under specific terms reflecting a neoliberal worldview (decreasing public spending, attracting foreign direct investment and facilitating trade). It was believed that these reforms would lead to economic prosperity and to be fair, they have been credited for managing hyper-inflation (though I'm not sure how much of this can be attributed to SAPs but that's a topic for another day). However, since their implementation, poverty has spread, corruption has grown and life expectancy actually declined. It's widely believed that these reforms undermined development and condemned recipient countries to a state of perpetual poverty. This is a complicated topic and very politically charged (Bob Geldof in particular has a reputation for being...colorful...), but regardless of where your personal politics lie, I think it's fair to say that these programs severely restrict many African countries' macroeconomic policy and begs the question, what impact will they have on recipient countries' (specifically those in Africa) capacity to replicate China's success: ips-dc.org/structural_adjustment_programs/
I'm in one of the most "richest" african economys and I can say that politicians have there priorities wrong, they wanna take the money that is now but not make more so they can take . Kinda sad cause I see how people that I knew fly into poverty as the years go by( we just getting more poor).
@@QH96 He's probably from here. And he's right the governing party had its priorities wrong. But now they lost the elections. They better step up or get kicked out.
I think this gives short shrift to the main thing that causes development like China had - policy changes. It's not that he doesn't mention it, but it's like a footnote in a lengthy video about demographics and statistics. In the 70s, Deng Xiaoping and his underlings implemented a series of market reforms. They weren't as broad as those of us in the west would have preferred, but when you go from full socialism to 'partial capitalism' almost overnight for more than a billion people, the resulting rise in living standards has been breathtaking. There's still alot of ways Chinese citizens are denied property rights, but going from no economic freedoms to some for a billion people is a HUGE thing. And while these started small as little 'special zones' where markets were allowed their success caused their expansion over the decades and especially in the 90s. Africa, as Wendover briefly admitted, is 54 different nations. And despite the demographic indicators, many of these nations are nowhere near any great expansion of economic freedom. Some actually have been making progress. Mauritius for example. If you want an Africa-wide economic revolution, it would require an Africa-wide policy change revolution. And that just doesn't seem likely. A few countries will continue moving in the right direction, and maybe a few will learn the lesson and follow their example. I do think Africa is making some progress. But I feel like someone annointed Africa as the sexy thing to talk about and is ahead of the actual policy progress on the ground. The best thing we could do is simply to allow and encourage free trade with the countries making policy progress and stop destabilizing their economy with well-intentioned, but poorly executed aid. Focus on removing barriers to their development rather than trying to prop them up. Development is hard. Talk to middle-ages Europe about it. It can't be forced from the outside. All we as outsiders can do is try to not throw additional obstacles in front of them.
Change can be revolutionary and evolutionary, it's harder and takes longer but continental change can occur without a continental policymaking body and perhaps with greater effectiveness
Aid often does more harm than good. Ship in a million free shoes for African school children and you put a hundred African shoemakers out of business, setting their economy back even further.
@@wendellsmith6638 100% agree. There was a developmental economist I read an interview with who was particularly outspoken on this topic. He said his number one prescription for countries trying to develop was 'property rights', but his number one piece of advice to those in the west who want to help was 'Stop helping, because you're really bad at it.' No business can compete with free. When you pump epic amounts of food aid into a country experiencing a famine, it puts local farmers out of business because they can't compete with 'free' and thus the famine gets worse the next year, and the next. Flooding countries with money is just as bad because that money invariably gets stolen by the corrupt governments that are responsible for the lack of development in the first place...thereby improving their ability to stay in power. Even paying for infrastructure improvements is usually a waste. Not always...but usually.
@@brianmulholland2467 Corrupt governments were put in place by the western US lead IMF which placed restrictions on what these countries could produce thereby making them even more dependent on foreign aid. The west never gives out freebies for nothing. Corporate owned US governments could care less about countries unless they have something they want to make money from.
It feels pretty strange to see so much time dedicated to that "demographic dividend" portion without addressing the logical next step when all of those working age people become retirement age people and that small number of children become the working age population. Seems like a recipe for collapse to me.
That's the issue governments and large companies are going to run into in the coming decades. So much growth is predicated on being able to pay it off in the future with extra resources, that when nations start seeing contractions from smaller populations, that's going to be significant. The other option is mass immigration from regions with excess population to bolster the demographics, but that's a temporary solution.
Check what is the máx. life span of Africans from different countries and you will see that ageing is not a problem at present, but quality of life (health, education and social support) is the big problem for the XXI century.
I think he didn't choose to mention it as it has been a known point for long already, and the main thing here may just be to compare whether Africa as a whole right now is setting up to look like how China was right before it economically expanded like crazy. But yeah, I did realize that the obvious point that this demographic dividend had immediately shown repercussions after the large economic booms it provided (especially China) - was omitted.
12:56 "... family planning program have seen some success in certain countries." Showing a clip from Thailand. That's a nice touch. Thailand is one of those countries.
Funny how the women in hijab detail made it look just like Indonesia, but not quite (the cars for one, they're not really models or brands that are common here as far as I can tell)
@@xpusostomos there was a whole episode where the Muslims in South Thailand wanted to join Malaysia and leave Thailand, with several militant groups leading the charge
While you brought up really great points, I do think that it will be hard for Africa to even scratch the economic success that China has achieved. While Africa has indeed the potential, comparing it to China is kind of misleading. China is governed by one authority, while Africa is governed by multiple different powers with different and opposing goals/priorities. Ultimately that could be a hinderance for Africa’s growth. I do however believe that with Chinas commitment to large infrastructure investment into Africa will better help connect neighbouring countries to work together to achieve economic prosperity.
Even with huge foregin investments flowing massively into african countries, there is still one thing that cant be overhopped in one night - people mentality. Africans will need decades to grab the fate in their own hands, embrace freedom and private economic initiative and forget about constant wars, oligarchy and corruption. Its hard for every nation in the world, but for some extreme cases in Africa its the hardest thing ever. But there is also hope, like Botswana. So maybe they will make it into a better world in other way than running to Europe. I wish Africans only success.
China's investments into Africa is more on par with exploiting it for China's own gain than in anyway propping up African nations for African prosperity and growth.
Everyone in this forum seems to have an incredibly unrealistic approach to the history and development of the African continent. It still belongs to Europe and is overwhelmingly forced to play by their rules. Capital from the extrapolation of it’s rich resources goes back to stock markets in London and Paris. It’s still a colony but now of European corporations and bad American money lending. China never had to overcome that.
I would say that this won't happen to the extent of China. China (whether you like their form of Govt or not) was a cohesive society with a government that was able to push their peoples into doing whatever they wanted. China had a lot of money pumped into it by the west around the dawn of the open door policy. Transportation into the interior of China took decades and Africa doesn't have these levels. Africa much like China was is riddled with corruption however, Africa has large religious tensions and separatist movements that haven't been crushed much like they were in China. South Africa has good infrastructure but the rest of Africa not so much and there's minimal navigable rivers in Africa like the Danube for Europe. Africa will have a growth economically but the way it's compared to China is strange as it would make more sense to use this comparison for India which has similar trends, better infrastructure and more established sectors yet is still emerging.
When China was "pushing it's people to do what they wanted", it was a basket case. When they loosened up and let the people do what THEY wanted, they achieved success.
Sounds like a proper analysis! I would like to add that China's history and identity (very proud people like iranians and turkish people) also helps in their work ethic and cohesiveness. There is a collective sense of being able to solve problems themselves without external support. Very interesting!
@@xpusostomos No they did not loosen up, they embraced command capitalism and have started tightening control over certain industries. In fact the behaviour of the Chinese citizen in mainland China improved after the CCP introduced the social credit system. Not only did it make Chinese citizens follow the govt line. It gave everyone there a reason to be good samaritan, instead of thinking of only themselves. For instance no longer would the Chinese citizen ignore an unattended very young child crossing into busy traffic on the roads and people started helping each other.
We’re comparing a continent to a country so yeah i wonder what that answer will be. It’s up to the countries within to see if they will develop quickly
Growing up as a youth in Uganda I've noticed a few things that hinder our development. 1. There are a lot of ethnicities, which may not be a bad thing, but it needs the right type of governance. 2. We have next to zero skills and our leaders have done nothing to improve them. 3. There's a weak mentality of quick success. 4. We are constantly blaming European colonialism but Europeans left over 50 years ago. Every place on earth was at some point under colonialism
short answer: NO slightly less short answer: NO due to many factors like culture, demographics, policies etc ... (future peeps in year 2100 or 2200 do reply here and let us know the result, thanks)
This comparison is literally crazy 😂😂😂😭. Your analogy of Europe being grouped with Africa being grouped together is completely false. 60% of European trade is with other European Countries while in Africa it is 16%, African and European economies are not similar, it is possible for Nigeria to be booming while Zimbabwe is in recession. Africa is not nearly as economically interlinked as you make out. To then compare a region with 54 sovereign countries to 1 country that had 1 authoritarian government and is ethnically homogeneous is literally horrendous.
That's the Western international liberal mindset. They're simply unable to grasp reality since their fundamental belief is that all humans are equal in every single way. It's why they believed India would overtake China as a superpower in 2020, but it's actually China that has shot way past them.
Yes, check out his Francafrique video. Also, with so many undeveloped countries, there are natural as well as unnatural reasons that lots of trade has to happen with other continents.
Gosh, How much do I have to repeat this to these illiterates in the comment sections. He literally mentioned that China is 1 country and Africa is 54 countries and pure data comparision is narrow and isn't going to cover everything in the discussion. And you people in the comment section are screaming because he didn't cover politic, because that's the only thing you brainlets can argue day after day on the internet without concrete proof and data, unlike statistic and demographic.
@@RealLotto You’ve literally said it yourself, it’s a essentially a pointless video that only pushes forward the stereotype of Africa being grouped together.
It's virtually impossible to generalize Africa, as there's so many variables and factors, depending on the country you're in. For all the instability and insecurity plaging countries like Sudan/South Sudan, there's countries such as Botswana that have seen steady economic growth that's helping it to transition into a developed economy, vastly improved infrastructure, solid public education and a stable democracy.
As always I really enjoyed the data breakdown, but I think this video in particular didn't sit super well for me because it felt too much like looking at these two places in the world as a black box, and comparing things that don't warrant a direct comparison (country with one government vs continent with dozens). I appreciated the final note that you made that it's hard to say Africa would be the next China because of all the individual successes that would need to happen, but I think you could've gone further. This just overall felt like a really Western, OECD way to look at economies and cultures and governments that don't run like European/American models and trying to make predictions out of them, which doesn't feel very accurate and ignores a lot of variables. Of course, this topic is hard to discuss in a 15 minute TH-cam video, and could probably warrant its own Econ textbook or class, so as always kudos to you Wendover for tackling these hard subjects. I just feel like this one could have been more nuanced than you made it.
any topic will have an endless number of neuances. for a topic as big as economics, generalizations are crucial to keep the topic within a 15 minute youtube video that humans with notoriously short attention spans will watch but generalizing for engagement and time efficiency comes at the cost of context and unexplained nuance If the content is not balanced correctly you could end up with a completely boring monologue of a college textbook or content too short and uninformative leaving people with a narrow, unrealistic/biased perspective (you called it a black box, more commonly referred to as twitter) Overall i think Wendover has a good spot on the scale of entertaining vs informative he pointed out that these indicators only were just a part of the story, and basically every comment is pointing out that too Wendover could be better but it also could be a lot worse.. at least he isnt on tiktok
@@KaterynaM_UA He spent the whole video talking about demographics. Nothing about the unstable politics of the region. (Chinas explosive growth since the 90s has been due to their abandonment of Communism and opening up to the west, not demographics) This would have to be by far the worst Wendover video I have seen. I don't know exactly why he chose not to focus on the politics of the region that is actually holding Africa back but I've got a pretty good idea.
China was able to grow because it leveraged its large population for economic growth and the was able to stay independent of western meddling to keep its industry competitive. Most African counties have neither of these. I could see Nigeria, Ethiopia, the North African countries, and the few stable democracies like Botswana and Ghana growing like China, but until most countries can be allowed to grow democratically, things won’t get better.
“Independent of western meddling” lmao yeah like decent labor laws and societal peace. China THRIVED because western countries outsourced cheap labor to them
Unlike Korea who leveraged their small population, I suppose... This has nothing to do what the CCP did. Their success is despite what the CCP did. It's all about the ambition and hard work of the Chinese people.
@@jobic4207If you can't see the ways the west would have exploited their leverage over the Chinese if they relied on them economically in anyway while simultaneously trying to grow, then I have a history lesson for you buddy... Or maybe I don't, you guys aren't exactly known for multiple point of views
I agree. Countries like Ghana, Rwanda, and Botswana are doing really well and will likely be first world countries in a few decades if not years. Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Egypt, and Nigeria all have lots of potential to be regional if not global power houses but are stuck at crossroads right now and their futures are still up for debate. Somalia, the Sudan’s, and chad are stuck in states of warfare and futures are unknown and South Africa ever since Mandela left has just been slipping.
I think some states do have the potential to become successful-likely the more stable ones like Ghana, Botswana, Kenya, Tanzania, etc. But I think a vast majority of African states will likely disintegrate within the coming century-whether that be through new unions or secessionist movements: Sudan, Ethiopia, etc. If we also take into account the increasing frequency of coups, and the lack of political willpower from the African Union, I think it’s likely there might even be continental wars in Africa over different resources-like water wars, which’ll result in winners and losers. So yeah, good video. And I agree with the conclusion. Some will become developed nations, but others will likely lag behind.
I would figure that the coastal states with good access to the world's oceans and a sizeable pool of potential manufacturing workers will emulate China's rise. All they need is that sweet foreign investment
100% correct. The big issue with African countries going back is that they did not form organically in any way. Peoples who do not consider themselves fellow citizens were pushed together by foreign nations whose interest was to extract material resources from them and we see the effects of that with things like secessionist movements, or governments dominated by a single ethnic group who rule over others.
@@2x2is22 See that's what you'd assume but that isn't always a constant. Geography is obviously important to the development of a nation, but good governance is even more important. Sudan for instance, is in the position to be a mediator between North and Sub-saharan Africa--but due to bad government it's largely lost any benefits that it could've had. Conversely, you've got states like Rwanda, which despite having cracked down severely on civil liberties, is for the most part a relatively stable state. So yeah, I think it has to do primarily with governance and the willpower of said government.
@@krombopulos_michael See there's this really great book about that very topic, it's called "Worldmaking after Empire". The essential claim is that post-colonial states, by and large, didn't focus on crafting a national identity, rather they focused on carving out a position on the world stage. This is largely why you don't see Germanies or Frances in Africa, because that wasn't the goal. The goal was independence and holding it all together once attained. We even see this with the post-colonial movements that swept the continent: panafricanism, panarabism, etc. All of which held a very loosely defined roadmap. Ironically, this was actually one of the primary debates after decolonization: a United States of Africa or an Africa of independent states. The compromise is the modern African Union. To not drag this out too long, this desire to carve out a slot on the world stage is also why after decolonization. African states made a sincere effort to prevent the redrawing of their borders: because it would cause a chain reaction that likely would've embroiled the continent in a series of bloody wars. It's really fascinating imo.
@Kazeshini Hijacker Yeah that's true as well. With Senegambia it's pretty interesting because ethnically the regions overlap almost entirely. Iirc the main reason why the union didn't work was because Gambia felt as though Dakar would hold too much power. And I think had Dakar alleviated those concerns better than the union likely could've worked out. That's why I think good governance can make or break a country.
I'm cheering for Africa but the China comparison is a bit sloppy 1) China was at some point the richest nation into the world. The poverty it faced in the 20th century was more an aberration than a norm 2) China had a lot of investment and know-how pour in once communism relaxed, from its diaspora populations (Hong Kong Taiwan etc) 3) The demographic dividend may have worked for China but I'm doubtful it will work for Africa. Automation as well as climate change may mean that it's youthful population is more a burden than benefit. Of course, I hope I'm wrong..
@@theburden9920 they actually can be, the cost of education and other social programs can be prohibitive due to growth rates Africa is growing faster than its infrastructure can improve
You are missing an important factor in all these statistics. CULTURE! I once had an African man who I worked with explain that in his culture " To raise himself up, all he had to do, was knock everyone around him down" I was so stunned by this, that we got into a argument and I realized that we were just simply so far apart in our belief systems that was no going forward. I am not saying that this is a scientific study, or significant but it sure was eye opening.
You discuss the dependency ratio without discussing the underlying issue China faces that Africa does not: children eventually become working age adults. Retirees do not.
"Retirement" is a western concept. In Asia, people work as long as they can and when they can't work, they look after their grandchildren. The average Asian cannot understand why Americans (and Europeans) are so lazy.
@@dirremoire Actually they do retire and expect their kids to look after them. For the better or worse, Asia is becoming similar to the west in that sense. Lazy is a strong word, the average asian doesnt understand why americans are so heartless towards their parents.
Hmm, the point is this, with less children to take care of there will be more disposable income and greater quality of life. This will lead to growth. Now we get to an inverse pyramid where one child will have to take care of several retirees, this is possible through social programs funded by the previous growth as long as goverments are prudent. If not you get a situation like China
Note that African governments are not at war with other. Moreover, there is a lot of trade going on. Those factors count much more that a "unified" population. Hell, we're not even unified in the US.
@@dirremoire right but there's a major difference in how China achieved their current economic status so comparing the two on the basis of what China did is flawed. That's literally why I said Africa is more like Europe. You've listed one of the reasons for why that is already.
It's not flawed at all because this video did NOT portray it this way, as Aemmel Pear said. This video acknowledges that one is a continent of 54 countries while China is just one, so it was implied that it's much easier to manage one country than 54 countries. I would in fact say, your comment is misleading in that it implies this video mis-analysed this, when it wasn't at all the case.
@@dirremoire the disunity of the African continent is incomparable to the disunity of American politics, these are 54 countries all with their own little political disunity, cultural disunity, different values, different religions, different ways of life, Americans being part of a red or blue political party is just nowhere near complicated as Africa
Very important factor: education. China built modern education system since the first day of independence. And 90+% had certain level of education when China opened up at 1979.
90%.. meaning 10% had no education whatsoever, 40% dropped out before finishing primary school and 70% didn't graduate primary school. Not exactly impressive.
@xpusostomos chinese place education as as very important criteria in their culture. Please look at the criteria for university entrance and numbers of top university. We dont know where you got the info of 40% from. It looks that you know nothing of china chinese.
@@wongth8689 don't show your complete ignorance.. the accepted stat in China in 1979 was the 9-6-3 rule.. 90% started primary school, 60% finished it, 30% graduated primary. Do some research instead of spouting nonsense.
@@foxskaminer I don't consider it "bad". Look at education numbers in western countries compared to today weren't so impressive. Success isn't all about education.
whenever I read about Africa sometimes I am literally crying...its so sad...we don't have true leaders in Africa...its just people running the country not leaders!
Instead of comparing Africa I think India would have been a better candidate. India is just entering the phase of demographic dividend that china entered two decades ago with dependency ratio going just below 50. And moreover india has many advantages regarding many sunrise sectors as well like AI/ML, renewable tech, auto and software. I see a significant rise with some luck and good policies.
The fact is Wendover Never ever talks about India whatsoever, He’s Biased. Watch Literally any video of his Video. He never ever mention India!! Even in a Vaccine Video of his He did not mention “India” when India is Largest Manufacturer of Vaccine
@@Nishantpatale9423 Don’t know, Wendover just never ever mentions or talk about India at all. I think he have some personal issues with India or maybe He’s Racist for Indians 🤣
one country overshadowed by india is already doing what china did before becoming the manufacturing powerhouse. the country is bangladesh. even wendover will start talking about it soon.
Really?? What I got out of it is that an economy can grow faster if it invests in businesses instead of in children or the elderly. Which is a very troubling and immoral conclusion. But it's what the data suggests.
Really hoping my country, South Africa, pulls up its socks and delivers the amazing quality of life it is able to give its citizens. We have a proper functioning democracy with incredible freedoms that have only been dampered by corruption.
Calling South Africa a "proper functioning democracy" is one hell of an euphemism. Doesn't the same non-ideological party of power get elected every single time since the 90s?
@@user-sm5sj6mg2t With ever decreasing support sure. Also our recent local elections have booted the ANC (which is very much idealogically aligned btw?) out of major metros. There's nothing wrong with their ideaology - just their inability to keep out rampant corruption. But I'm more referring to functioning courts, public protectors, free press and open economy. Eskom kinda shit ngl but we getting there
@@user-sm5sj6mg2t Fellow South African here -> it’s absolutely correct to say that the ANC has been elected since the 90s, but I think what the comment is really trying to say is that our citizens have the ability to vote and elect their own representatives in reliable elections. (which is pretty noteworthy in an African context) To add to that, support for the ANC has been declining steadily for at least 10 years, we had municipal elections recently and the ANC didn’t even come out with a majority. Plus the anti-Zuma anti-corruption wing of the party is now just barley the majority. Also - the ANC is very ideological, I’m not sure where you got the idea that they aren’t.
South Africa has a lot of potential as a country, and similarly to China, it can extract that potential by investing heavily into its manufacturing sector and incentivising foreign companies to move there with reduced tax rates. At the moment the main problem is that taxes are too high. Unreliable electricity and crime also play large factors of course, but those are solved with foreign investment.
It’s true. If you took everyone from Ghana and put them in Germany, and took everyone from Germany and put them in Ghana, which country would look developed in 50 years?
Right, I think the people have been corrupted by the leaders. In some African countries you can’t do anything without corrupt money been involved and I believe African governments have created that kind of society over the last couple of decades. When Africans do move to a more developed and less corrupt countries they are actually less or not corrupt.
@@grandtheftavocado If you took Germany in the 16th century and subjected it to centuries of colonisation, arbitrary division and extratraction of resources I am not sure that it'd look crash hot either.
Language wasn't mentioned, but it's important because it puts up barriers to regional cooperation. China has one primary language (Mandarin) while Africa a dozen (French, English, Portuguese, Arabic, etc) -- or thousands if you count local/tribal languages.
Yeah, no. China has historically been divided into a dozen languages, even variants of Mandarin couldn't understand the one used right now. There's Mongol, Manchu, Mandarin, Cantonese and plenty of others.
For economic growth, you need four main things. A centralized government with simple, fair, and uniform laws. A government that allows individual freedom and doesn't impinge on individual rights through regulation or excessive taxation. An impartial court system to enforce contracts and adjudicate criminal matters. A culture of hard work, morality and business ethics with an anti-corruption emphasis.
You're comparing one nation under a single administration to a continent of 54 countries who are not always so keen to cooperate with one another. This isn't comparable. This is like comparing South America to Israel. As someone who was born, lives, and works in Africa, I feel that this video is really inaccurate nor can you compare China to Africa.
Hello! This video made me think about something else. Since most your videos reflect ideas i too think about during my travels, i was wondering if you'd be interested in making a video comparing the economies of north africa, sub Saharan africa (though you grouped both in this video, i do believe them to be quite dif, given northern Africa's connection to the European economy etc) and central and south america's economy. And if possible, the violence that exists in those areas, that i feel are an impediment to the local economies (ex.: drug violence in south and central america). I also like to look at the historical existence of violence (ex.:wars) and how they influenced the development of economies. As current developed states seem to not have any or residual internal conflict, even though wars have also been seen to impulse technological advances.
This video is a great example of the law that says that any headline that ends with a question mark can be answered with "no". One of the things that helped China along was the fact that it had continuity of culture and history for like hundreds, if not thousands of years. African countries, let alone the entire continent often doesn't have the luxury of a long term history of stability and cultural unity that China (at least, eastern China, obviously tibet was fairly culturally distinct). Its a lot easier for a country to have an economic expansion if it has a foundation to build on.
People who read and write Chinese know that China don't have continuity of culture and history. This idea is invented after Meiji Restoration, at that time Japan invented a concept that Emperor bloodline is continuous (萬世一系). The Qing kingdom (not Chinese Qing) borrow the concept from Japan and invent itself as continuous culture. The problem is that even Qing itself is not continuous. Manchu (i.e. Qing) occupation has not much difference from Russian occupation or any foreign occupation except Manchu occupy more than 90% territory and Russian occupied less than 10%, and Manchu is less civilized compared to Russia. I must say even Ming kingdom (明) and Han kingdom (漢) have completely different culture, religion and bureaucracy even their kings have same race.
Lot of questionable claims in this video. Economic interconnectedness alone isn't enough to merit looking at Africa as a whole. Some countries, such as Kenya, have a pretty good shot of experiencing rapid growth, but many countries will be left behind.
As they should be...Africa just needs a great example to follow like Japan was for Singapore and South Korea in the 1960s. I hate it when Development Economists lump the whole of Africa together but never attempt that when talking about other continents. It would take centuries for Africa to achieve any form of convergence to ACTUALLY implement a unique continent-wide agenda! The faster would actually be African Nations competing amongst themselves and imitating one another. This let's unite is just an avenue to sing kumbaya under a rainbow: it's a waste of time and resources and would remain a fantasy for years to come.
According to the authors of "Empty Planet," standing alongside education is cell phone usage as relates to Africa's fertility rate. They make a persuasive argument that Africa's population is not going to increase as fast as predicted by the UN, necessarily positively affecting the dependency rate as I understand your argument. Cell phone penetration which includes persons who don't own a phone but have regular access to one now stands at 76%.
When will you, the western world,stop speaking ill of African countries?We do not require any white Messiah for our economies to grow strong, the only thing we expect of you is fair trade devoid of any form of adult-supervision!! Keep that in mind!
@@Avanguard4128 not saying the other guy is right, but how the heck is someone doubting Africa's future population growth speaking ill of African countries?
I've read that book and this was based on Kenya alone, where I'm from. African countries are difficult to predict in terms of fertility issues. Like Uganda, Tanzania, Nigeria have hardly reduced their fertility since 60/70s as the video notes. I'm not very optimistic...
@@jameskamotho7513 You're not optimistic regarding the video's thesis or fertility rates in Africa. Because I looked at the fertility rates of the 3 countries you mentioned and others in Africa and I found fertility rates peaking around 1990 and dropping, sometimes precipitously, since 2010. For example, regarding Uganda, Tanzania, and Nigeria, fertility rates form 2010/2020 are 6.87/4.82, 5.43/4.83 and 5.84/5.43 respectively for these 3 countries. I found fertility drops year-over-year in all these countries since at least the 90s. Please bear in mind I have no expertise in Africa or demographics. I live in the US. You may appear optimistic, but something like 70% of Americans think the country is "on the wrong track." 🙂
I personally don’t like comparing a whole continent to that of a country. I get the point being made but it simplifies the continent as all the countries in it are not the same. Countries within the continent most def have an high potential of growth.
Yeah. It took two world wars for Europe to decide to unify. Even then it took big actions from major powers before the rest came together. And now one of the big players has backed out.
@@stevenroshni1228 i mean they did not really unify just found out that cooperation and sharing was a better idea than going for another war, The African Union a already exist be name and some country has create economic block whit each other like what the US, canada and mexico did (USMCA)
Many (most) of the African nations share the same struggles at the moment. This video was a potential roadmap to securing a better economic outlook in the future. You can't lump all of the countries together in many respects, but these policies would apply to most sub-Saharan nations in the present, which is why it's appropriate to generalize in this case.
just in the last two months or so , at least two coup d'etat have happened in Africa , one in Mali , another one in Guinea , and these are just the two I recall off my head ...and i am not even going to mention the countless wars that are ongoing and terrorism and what have you ...as I am typing Adis Abeba is about to fall to the Tigray rebels .....and you still want to compare Africa with a centrally governed country like China that has only one party system....
I think the word got to Wendover that Money & Macro was coming for him, this video is much more careful (and better) than the last. My take though is that the big thing that people get wrong about China's explosive growth is that it spent decades being run into the ground. The country was essentially obliterated on the economic front, but much of the deeply ingrained patterns and habits of China's population survived and most of it's growth can be attributed to a "bounce back" to where it would have been if Mao hadn't been in charge. It really matters where you start the comparison from, dial it back 300 years and China's economic success doesn't look that unusual compared to Europe's. When it comes to Africa (at least below the Sahara) there isn't a recent prior successful base to bounce back from, Africa has been poor for the last 400 years (the Arab and Atlantic slaves trades did a lot to contribute to this it must be admitted). Africa is surely going to grow a lot, just don't expect it to be anything like as quick as China's was, especially as the leading countries aren't sitting still themselves. And one really big thing that's a huge problem for Africa but not China: the dozens and dozens of independence wars that are going to have to be fought this century-by far the worst legacy of colonialism.
Europe was raided for slaves for centuries, so was the ME and Asia, sorry but blaming slavery over and over is ridiculous. Not to mention when Europeans discovered Africa they didn't even have the wheel or 2 story buildings, what's your excuse there?
@@mattstorm6568 Nothing mentioned in your comment is an argument. It's just miscellaneous facts that might prove your beliefs right, which aren't even obviously related to the statement of "slavery held back Africa". Obviously, Slavery isn't the only reason why Africa is weak, and they would just be a little stronger without slavery as they are nomadic people primarily. (Most African countries only grew by taking advantage of European and American powers, some hired Europeans as government officials, others depended on drones and other technology rather than infrastructure building to gain influence on the world stage, etc.) However, please collect better arguments in the future.
It would be interesting/important to do this same overview for the different regions of Africa... see which one is more likely see the development first.
The trouble is, the vast majority of politicians are only in it for themselves, they pursue big development projects (Kenya's Lamu port for example) because those are flashy while ignoring the actual people. There is this culture of "The people serve the Government" and not the other way around.
Depends. I don’t know much about this port but big investments mean more jobs, which means more people, which means more demand and purchasing power, which means more investment. Not saying this port was a good idea but investment is pretty much the easiest way to modernize and help a country.
@@jobic4207 Oh the port was just an example it's barely even connected to the nations transportations systems. But I'll contrast that with the culture developed by the education, its a very "shut up and listen" type thing, where questions are punished and grades are prioritised to a stupid degree. Having the projects would be great, if equal or greater emphasis were put on the people who can create the ecosystem for them.
@@JanbluTheDerg Stop misleading people. The port was built with the intention of supplying Ethiopia and S.Sudan. Roads, a Railway, A pipeline, a refinery and resort cities have mostly been constructed to cater for this change.
I'd expect Africa to start really taking off around the 2050s and 2060s personally, it will grow over the next few decades, sure, but at something like 4-5% I'd expect, as it focuses it's efforts on just bringing up it's children, educating them, creating housing, and just generally getting the basics of a functioning society in place for a society that is rapidly growing in size.
I guess I learned enough from my economic development course back in 2015 that I predicted the conclusion of this video, except I had one extra in mind: Political and social stability. There’s little benefit to starting any enterprise if some militia can come by and take it from you.
Gosh, How much do I have to repeat this to these illiterates in the comment sections. He literally mentioned that China is 1 country and Africa is 54 countries and pure data comparision is narrow and isn't going to cover everything in the discussion.This is a video focusing on data analyzation, and you people in the comment section are screaming because he didn't cover politic, because that's the only thing you brainlets can argue day after day on the internet without concrete proof and data, unlike statistic and demographic.
The logic at ~ the 3 min mark seems very flawed... If you take the current African GDP as a fixed number, you'll of course find a year when it was equivalent in China, but that provides exactly zero information... What you should care about are the rates of change and any factors relevant to GDP and how similar/different these factors are.
I think the point is to show exactly how far behind Africa is, and use that to show just how far they could get in the near future if they follow the same economic and demographic trends
@@diepie5144 The only countries in Africa that were ever considered "first-world" and developed to Western standards were Rhodesia and South Africa before 1994. Both were ruled by whites so it makes total sense. Point out a country in Africa that is stable, well-educated, industrialized, and not starving every week.
@@f-86zoomer37 did I ever say Africa was first-world? I said the point of this video was to make the case that Africa *could* become first world in 20 years if it followed the same path of economic development. I don't even think that will happen, China only industrialized as it did because the Chinese state was stable enough to ensure that western businesses would be able to set up factories without having to fear about them being taken by corrupt oligarchs etc. But even that's besides the point you're making, which is that Africa *can't* industrialize, which I find looks over the fact that the majority of sub-saharan Africa didn't even have legal codes before they were colonized. The region has been effectively speed-running the process of building a state and economy from scratch since Colonial powers left in the '50s. The reason the most successful areas of Africa post-colonization were majority-white was that those people were better educated and had brought with them modern industrial and agricultural practices that most Africans did not have access to.
@@diepie5144 level of education is irrelevant, it is how fast your worker can learn new concepts that matters. and china has the 6th highest iq in the world with the largest labor force in the world. that is an automatic slam dunk. every company would want to set up plants there. now that is changing in favor of vietnam because china is closing down to the outside world again under xi.
As a Nigerian, I think it unfair to compare Africa to China. Firstly, China is a mostly homogeneous society which cannot be said for Africa. Chinese society and their government have different and specific goals on what they want to achieve, and they do whatever it takes whether good or bad to achieve it. The Chinese communist party with all the allegations of oppression and expansion is able to keep the citizens quiet because they invest and improve the quality of life of their citizens. I do see some African countries improving significantly in the next decade but not all African countries. We have starting to see countries like Guinea, Mali and most recently Sudan going back to military and authoritarian era because of corruption and the citizens not seeing the benefit of democracy. I see some African countries become more Authoritarian while some become more democratic. Whatever part is chosen by any African country, I hope it pays well for the citizens and countries.
I don’t like this grouping of autocratic or Democratic I think countries should experiment to find which governance system works for them to modernise and not stagnate.
Another big factor that you did not mention but is key in my opinion is the climate. While China is located in a rather mild climate zone, most of Africa struggles with yearly floods, constant heat and other weather extremes. Therefore, Africa can’t just concentrate on all the factors you mention in order to grow economically but will always have setbacks in its evolvement, which slows the economic process a lot. Since not every country faces the same problems, has different standards of living and has to grow on its own, it’s very unlikely that Africa as a whole will see any significant developments. Great video though, I liked it!
China's heartland has had a single written language and a handful of major spoken languages for thousands of years. Africa has thousands of different languages. There are 75 languages that have over 1million speakers. Talking about Africa as a unified entity is nonsense.
12:40 Obviously the easiest part of the cycle to effect is the dependents, since a nation could simply have every person who retires and no longer contributes to the labor pool executed. Oh you meant the education part? Boy is that egg on my face!
Unification is only beneficial if run by monarchies or non democratic regimes. Otherwise the nation shatters due to the huge disparities and conflicts of interests like you see in occident. Those unification evangelists were actually incompetent white socialists who never achieved anything in occident, they only came in power after the wealth was already established.
This video makes some good points while leaving out some very important points. The premise is a bit too simple, talking about Africa as a whole was also too simple,.. yet it made some fair points. Africa is complex. North Africa and Sub Saharan Africa’s growth trajectories for example are affected by different trends and in some ways might as well be different continents. Then there are political obstacles like the fact that many African countries are “artificial” states struggling with integration issues, before discussing how little integration exists within the continent itself. Then there is the discussion about whether manufacturing is truly an option for high job growth in the 21st century with the 4th industrial revolution and increased automation on the horizon. I am still glad someone took a stab at this, it’s one perspective and one factor (demographics) and that is a start.
Don't forget that climate change is expected to make much of the African continent unlivable this century. I don't see how this end well given current trajectory...
Gosh, How much do I have to repeat this to these illiterates in the comment sections. He literally mentioned that China is 1 country and Africa is 54 countries and pure data comparision is narrow and isn't going to cover everything in the discussion.This is a video focusing on data analyzation, and you people in the comment section are screaming because he didn't cover politic, because that's the only thing you brainlets can argue day after day on the internet without concrete proof and data, unlike statistic and demographic.
I see a lot of comments so far espousing how they think "Africa" is inherently doomed to fail. Just going on record here with my observations - though I doubt many will read all of this this. As an American that has worked Engineering projects in both Tanzania, Morocco, Rwanda and the DRC. There is no way a Continent the size, diversity, and scope of Africa can possibly be lumped as a singular entity. In some regions of Africa, like West Africa (Just pulling out of French economic colonialism), and the EAC - could be grouped together like the EU, so I agree with Wendover. Obviously the difference is a matter of where one of the 54 Counties is economically - and where and how in that Country they invest. And how each Nation has coped with previous colonization, and continued outside influence (Think: AFRICOM). Factually speaking, and According to the World Bank, Tanzania is more politically stable than Mexico, and about equal to Georgia (The Country) . *Namibia is more politically stable than the U.S.*, Rwanda is more politically stable than Montenegro, and *Botswana is more politically stable than Ireland.* More importantly, the economic growth rate in these Countries over the past decade dwarfs every Western nation (which to be fair is easier when coming from near nothing). 16 of the top 30 fastest growing economies in the past decade are in Africa. None are in the West. If 4 Caribbean islands are excluded, not one North American country is even in the top 75 in terms of economic growth rate. A certain group of Americans will always see what they want to see in terms of Africa, and the African Diaspora. However, from my experience with boots on the ground there, One would likely want to target investments in the future, and not the past. Many African governments are now understanding that raw materials are not a source of wealth, but only a source of perpetual poverty if there is no locally manufactured/produced value add to export and trade (think: where your cocoa will soon be _processed_ now) Also important to point out is the Westernized worldview of _Economic gains,_ materialism, and individual consumption as a barometer of a nations success probably won't apply to the Ubuntu culture of many parts of African society. Rwanda is an example of how a Country can quickly recover from a colonizer-contrived divide-and-rule environment. This I submit may be the best quality of many African societies. Unlike the U.S. and some other Countries, they can recover from being taught to hate one another, for the benefit of the social good. My 2 cents.
Fantastic video as usual Wendover - one big part missing though I would say. Climate change impacts in the coming years are poised to hit the Global South and particularly many African nations very hard. Regardless of mitigation costs, adaptation costs alone will be enormous. Whether there is a development solution for that remains to be seen.
When African Politics finally decides to exercise some will and drive an actual as well as a cultural change over Education (Stop dropping failure rates of students through lowering grading standards and kick the Teachers' Unions' asses over its corruption and protection of inept teachers), the Population bubble moving up to reduce the dependency ratio will do no good for the prosperity of the Continent. We have Teachers' Unions showing a blind eye to teaching posts being sold in township schools, and teachers in rural areas are rarely competent to teach (we wanted to introduce mandatory CPD for teachers in SA, the unions forced a strike instead)
The entire continent of Africa has WAY too much growth to do before it'll grow. China has one government Africa has +50 governments. I do not see the continent being a real factor in the world's economy.
@@xpusostomos nah, its mainly the government. They implement policies on education, infrastructure, transportation and industry. These things are important for a developing country. What the people can do is influenced by the environment that the government creates you know like giving them the education to engage in productive jobs.
Would love for you to do a similar comparison between India and China. Similar to Africa, India is roughly 15-20 years behind China in economic indicators but I am not so sure about the other Social indicators. But unlike Africa, India is relatively stable single cohesive country.
Maybe " is Africa the next China " is a bit over blown, but rather, China want to make Africa the next China starting from one country at the a time. For example, we see the result in Ethiopia, Kenya, and keep moving on the next country one at a time.
I think you shouldve narrowed down to specific countries since any meaningful and impactful data are only coming from a handful of African States like Ethiopia , Egypt,Morocco, south Africa and Kenya.
South Africa won't become any powerhouse. It's a far cry from what it used to be. Ethiopia is in a civil war. Same with Morocco. War war war is just the nature of the African man.
Too late for both Africa and India We are in the midst of the 4th industrial revolution, where automation will replace human labor in low value added manufacturing, which means it is impossible for Africa or India or rest of the developing world to copy China/ East Asia's growth model of starting from low value added manufacturing, then moving up the economic value chain. Which means China is likely the last major economy to fully industrialize through human labor.
No, industries like garment production, electronics assembly, furniture manufacturing, toy manufacturing, etc. are now huge in Vietnam, Bangladesh, Ethiopia
Very interesting, thank you. I think it was a little confusing to switch between "10 years ago" and "in the 70s", etc. Maybe you could take 2021 China as a reference and just always say "x years behind". That might be more intuitively comparable :)
@@zombieat Depends on the size of them respectively. But yes, the video acknowledges that explicitly and that's basically the conclusion. Have you watched the video in its entirety?
Currently, i do not believe that africa can. Corruption is rising and there are way too many problems happening like civil wars, wars, rebellions, corruption and almost no cooperation between african countries. In the future, yes, it has the potential, but i do not believe that it will happen in the near future. Especially considering what happens in south africa, nigeria, ethiopia, ertigrea and so on. I do not believe that it will be a second china. It will take much time.
Wdym ethiopia is finally back on track and removing the last obstacle to get rid of ethnic federalism once and for all plus its opening up its almost isolated economy to foreign companies and investors they are on the right track if u ask me
You can’t really compare an entire continent to individual countries. Countries in Africa are developing very differently. Rwanda and Botswana are really on their way up and are genuinely on the road to prosperity, the fate of Nigeria, Kenya, and Ethiopia is still a hit or miss, South Africa is sliding backwards, and…let’s not talk about Chad, the Sudans, or Somalia.
You can’t really but it’s impressive considering Africa has been dealing with tyrants and unstable governments along with civil wars and genocide for decades while China after uniting had no problems apart from a bad economy for a while
@@Prideium9001 China had a famine which killed more people than the holocaust they had a lot of problems
He literally made that point at the end of the video... But you are right:) whoever gets rid of corruption and coups will probably succeed first
@@Prideium9001 not true, china is a national security state, it lies for its national security, we really dont know what s going on in china, except by the numbers. because facts dont lie
@@Prideium9001 The main reason of the instability is because the vast majority of countries and borders were arbitrarily drawn by Europeans. I mean, if one day, out of nowhere, you put French, English and Italian people in one territory and tell them to share it equally, guaranteed war will break out in a few years. Now do the same, but quadruple the number of different groups, a you get your average African country.
The animations on the dependency graphs were so class. Really fascinating watching that bubble move up the demo
Does anyone know what software/design interface they might use to make graphics as compelling as these?
Evan commenting on yet another channel that I watch lmao
@@ollie23mack I wanna know too
Can I have a nice Skype chat with you please?! Like I have a few work ideas for you and l love to see if you're interested in getting it's done.
do you enjoy cheeseburgers evan
"It's a region that gets left behind. That means the only way to go is up"
Zimbabwe: "I'm gonna pretend I didn't see that"
Yep. One of my friends invested at the 'low' point of a company. I told him that the LOW point is zero.
Zimbabwe is actually developing fast
@@v_isforvictory9366 Where are you now?
You can say the same for the uk now lol
@@ohlangeni Nice joke
Wendover: "The only way is up for Africa".
Nigeria: keeping digging we have to find new lows.
😂😂 Drill straight through the planet till we reach the core
Diggy Diggy Hole.
Very true but Biafran independence is imminent
@@klausunder8876 biafraud rebels getting gunned down maybe. Or most likely when buhari leaves office and some rando easterner is elected they'll shut up.
I think the fall of the oil price in 2015 really shake Nigeria. Nigerians are beginning to demand more from the government over the last 6 years.
I feel the “demographic dividend” is more of a demographic loan. We’ve seen it in Japan, and we’re starting to see it else where; eventually those who were propping up the low dependency rate grow old, and this causes the dependency rate to shoot up as they never had the children to replace them
@@laurabrown5288 Curtains? That's not sex! I demand more exciting spam.
The reason for Japan's decline is very different matter. The reason for Japan's surge wasn't due to demographic dividend (not saying it was a none factor but just not the main reason). It was the Japanese governments policy they implemented at the time to boost development of companies. Companies during that era gave out research funding as if it was candy during that time and lead to a short term but accelerated boost to their economy and now that has caught up with them. As for the aging population of Japan. It is the culture that is causing the issue. Japan is very very anti-immigration, and as we all know immigration for a developed country is the only way to have a rising or stable population. (plus the younger population in Japan aren't exactly treated well so they aren't really keen on making their lives harder by having children)
@@XxBanziixX1 Look up history.
Immigration has rarely succeeded for the host nation. And so it will be a net loss in the long term for the people.
@@AlexFlodder
The US is pretty much dependent on immigration. Its hard to say it rarely works.
@@XxBanziixX1 that's pretty short sighted
Most of Africa misses the most important part to economic prosperity tough: political stability. As you mentioned that's partially because of the resouce curse.
The resource curse is not the resources themselves, but then being exploited by the west for their resources. Western exploitation is the curse.
Political stability and climate change
True, many companies and governments will invest billions or even trillions into genocidal dictators so long as they provide stability in the economy and politically. Mao kill more people then Hitler but the west handed him a UN security council seat and trillions in investment because he created stability and agreed to keep his genocides quiet unlike that rabble rouser hitler who had to get noisy
@@kevinwilliam2356 in this case its more like eastern exploitation
@@kevinwilliam2356 We have literally seen the resource curse operate within the West in places like the Netherlands and UK.
It is far more than a Western Exploitation thing.
The problem is that China was a very political stable country, same thing that the Africans countries are famous for not be
They are unstable because they are incapable of building an advanced economy. You're mixing cause and effect.
That has changed dramatically. Although there are still some basket cases, many countries like Rwanda, Malawi, Ethiopia, Botswana, Zambia are not. They are very stable and are on the verge of breaking into the first world club relatively soon.
@@dirremoire don't be ridiculous, they have a GDP of about 2% per capita of a first world western country... And those are the better African countries.
@@dirremoire These countries are not even middle income countries
@@xpusostomos I kinda disagree. South africa absolutely had the resources and the potential to grow even bigger than it became during the apartheid era. But economic mismanagement because of post apartheid politics caused the south african economy to rapidly decline. I would know, I saw it happen in real time
So when can I expect PolyMatter’s series of Africa’s reckoning?
Circa 2042
@@thesauce1682 look up, “The African Union HQ” lmfaoooo!
@@feargripper look up any history book regarding the "wests" actions in Africa. Heck you don't even have to look that far back to see why we don't buy your BS. Look most of us generally don't give AF about your dick measuring contest with China, we just want to develop our economies and live better lives. If that way be through chinese investments then so be it.
@@tobilobaokorodudu9594 did I say that western nations didn’t exploit the entire world from the 1800s onwards, no. Dude look at my pfp, do you think I’m an ignorant bitch. No super power has and never will be fair and just, regardless of what their ideology states.
@The Yangem yeah but we're supposed to buy your criticism when you're literally still doing the same thing. Atleast one deal gets us tangible benefits. The other just brings covert destabilisation and regime changes
Grouping Africa as a whole was a fatal error for an otherwise well researched video. Even if you mentioned it, you continued to make the same mistake as the media does. Had you focused on regions, say West Africa, South Africa or East Africa, it would have made more sense.
Yeah, agreed; I was like wtf?
I agree. At least, the least they could do is separate Sub-Saharan Africa from the North. For example, Tunisia and DR Congo are at the polar opposites.
Yup, grouping sub-Saharan Africa with the rest of the continent is very misleading. Northern Africa is much more developed than sub-saharan Africa, so it makes those statistics look much more promising than they really are. That region is culturally, economically and geographically too different from the rest of the continent for it to be useful to look at them as a whole.
@@DawidEstishort But Southern Africa is the most developed region.
@@fullmetaltheorist It's roughly simmilar to north Africa in that sense. But development of the country is not the only factor when looking at whether or not a particular grouping of countries is useful or not.
Putting sounthern African countries into the same group as central African countries is a kind of a simplification, but it still makes much more sense than putting northern African ones together with central African ones.
Nigeria will have real Nigerian Princes if they get wealthy.
They already do... I got emails offering to send me money from one
@@xpusostomos ayo your Nigerian uncle still alive
The wealthiest African people are all from Nigeria
@Wiegraf they're still the richest by far
@Wiegraf do this without South Africa
Raise your hand if the “Rules for Rulers” video by CPG Grey made it painfully obvious what one big contributing factor was to resource economies not leading to economic development
Lenin’s “Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism” made it clear as well a hundred years ago.
@@alvarolopes5602 Except that book was written before a nearly a century of evidence contradicting its thesis.
@@VineFynn source?
1st E-prostitutes now there’s E-Salespeople. And I thought ads were enough
it did for saudi arabia and the rest of the gcc though.
I’m African, Nigerian to be precise. In my opinion, the most important factors holding the continent back economically are socio-cultural ones. Systemic corruption especially is a major problem. Also a paucity of outstanding leaders continent wide to lead the charge has been a challenge; Africa largely lacks true leaders.
colonialism hasn’t changed unfortunately
but the biggest difference is that china is also trying to interfere in the african nations too now
otherwise though europe and china and us are meddling in africa and the african leaders are being bribed
Nepotism which breeds Corruption
Sad reality is all the best African minds are putting their skills to use in other continenent as a direct result of the shitty leadership we have.
I do look forward to seeing living conditions improving in Africa. If anything, I think the cities will see the lion's share of the gains.
I hope living conditions improve so they don’t feel the need to leave their homeland for ours.
That's how it is everywhere, large rural parts of the US didn't get electricity until the new deal in the 30s
Hopefully
Just like China, yeah.
Why are you looking forward? What do you care?
I wonder what impact the African union will have on the inter-connected future of Africa?
The AU props up dictators, but so does the West. The difference is the West picks favorites, while the AU supports all dictators equally.
If it could get a few stable, strong and wealthier members countries to push it and to push for the kind of integration that the EU has with structural funds, etc. then it could succeed and probably do a better job than China in terms of balance of human rights and economic development.
Does the AU actually do anything?
@Wiegraf wonder who's supporting it by keep selling them guns and shit 🤔
And who's bombing Mali right now??
Integration is the obvious way for Subsaharan Africa of course, but the current state of the AU is laughable
I think Asia still has quite a ways to go on growth before Africa starts growing
thinking doesn't mean shit, stats show the highest GDP% growth are in African countries
@Reydotexe i'll trust legit data over some feelings.....
Depends on how long it takes Xi to colonize african states and invest in their economies. Once African companies have skyrocketing revenue that stays in the Chinese allied minority their colonies GDP will skyrocket on paper and Africa will finally be civilized and prosperous
Hopefully if they pull it off they can keep Chinas hands off Vietnams strings, because theres nothing the CCP wants more than to operate their neighbors governments like a puppet. They created a vast empire of tributary states once and they're already turning african states and asian states into colonies. I hope the west and other Asian countries open up more to vietnam
@@Killajmj no ones denying that. He said before Africa's prosperity starts before that there are other countries in asia.
I feel like this falls apart at the equivalence of an African economy to a European econony. Europe is referenced as a single economy because of the EU, not because of its geography. There is no (effective) African Union. What goes on in Egypt hardly affects South Africa or even Nigeria. In fact, North Africa is often considered a seperate entity, so it's already odd to group it into an arbitrary "Africa".
The question is asked like "will Africa be the next China" but is presented as "Will Africa become developed". Africa cannot be the next China, it isn't ruled by one power. Will Africa become developed? Probably, but just like the Eastern vs Western Europe, its unlikely to be even.
This video is answering a question it asked itself. And I think it's flawed. The grouping of Africa as one singular entity is the mistake made by colonizers hundreds of years ago, no reason to make that again in our modern day and age.
Exactly this !
he literally explained this point in the vid did you even watch
@@Mark-Wilson Yes, and I still object to the choice of words. Sub-saharan Africa would be more appropriate, as the economy of Morocco is basically more interlinked with a country like Spain than let's say Mauritania, Chad or Cameroon
What would be the main disadvantage to an official "African Union" ?
You're right that Africa will never be looked at as a single geopolitical player the way China or the EU is, but Europe absolutely would still be considered a single economic region even without the EU, like Southeast Asia is and will continue to be regardless of how fully it develops.
(Also- yes if European countries didn't trade with each-other much it would weaken the argument for considering them one economic region, but this idea is too unlikely to be worth considering. They still would trade with each other extensively even without the EU. Look to the fact that Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia already have regional trade blocs. Countries will always trade with their closest neighbors most, and when they are of similar size their economies will become interdependent.)
You are missing the most important factor in development: Politics. China, for the most part, has a strong bureaucracy and provides a (relatively) stable environment for investors. Much of Africa, unfortunately, is plagued by instability, a corrupt or weak bureaucracy, and internal divisions. This is reflected in most countries faring significantly worse on the ease of doing business, corruption perception, and fragile states indices. Those African countries that fare (relatively) well on those indicators, like Botswana, Ghana, or (to a lesser degree) Namibia, have seen or are seeing some solid economic growth.
Well china WAS instable, (after their big civil war) but they managed to stabilise themselves
That's called the second civil war, or called Chinese Communist Revolution
@@boscofoo8210 technically it is faaar from being the second one lol but shhhhhh. China was always commie and stable.
What
@@boscofoo8210 China Political Party more stable than America One Thats what he mean
The bottom line
1. Africa’s economic indicators follow 20-year-ago China’s, which seems promising
2. But, its demographic ones are still far behind that of China, due to lack of education and high dependency rate
3. The most straightforward way to solve this problem is reinforcing the edication
4. In the end, some African countries, if not all, might succeed in becoming the next China
No, I guarantee there will always be extreme poverty and distability, in many african countries
@@t.c.4321 Cope
@@t.c.4321that not happening now Africa is doing pretty good
Education, peace, and stability are Africa’s best bets for improvement. Good luck.
Very hard for Africa when governments are conducting business on behalf of its citizens. Then burying profits in offshore accounts.
Water. Steel. Bricks. Roads. Factories. Schools and hospitals are
#2 and #3 are the exact same. They've never had #1 and #2, and they never will. Have you ever made the connection between diverse ethnic groups sharing the same land being a source of tension and conflict?
Zoomer isn’t diversity our strength in the west? ;-)
Africa is cursed by natural resources. Nigerian elites are selling their oil to French tycoon to get rich instead of hiring Nigerian engineers to process it domestically. Botswana's future's looking bright though
I read the thumbnail and was wondering what "explode" means, is it expansion or collapse? XD
I can see what you mean! However, I think 'implode' would be the more common word to mean collapse. Just like how a booming economy means it's doing well.
Same
Explode is expansion. Implode is collapse
For Africa, exploding population, collapsing economy.
Good point lol
The next Africa is going to be Africa . It is totally wrong and misleading talking about a huge continent as one single country ....not only we are talking about several countries with totally different economical system but also with little to no interdependency or infrastructures that link these countries together , with the exception may e of eastern Africa ...western Africa is dominated by Nigeria , southern Africa is dominated by South Africa ...North Africa is totally different from the rest of the continent and is more linked to Europe and the middles east than to the rest of the sub Saharan Africa.
"It is totally wrong and misleading talking about a huge continent as one single country"
Yes, he said the exact same thing in the video
I had high hopes for Ethiopia but that conflict in the tigray has definitely shaken my faith. It feels like every time an African country is poised to develop, it gets completely undermined
The conflict is going to subside soon.We stand strong with Ethiopia and Abiy Ahmed's government!
about that, hows botswanna doing? i havent heard from them for a long time
Because as the video notes, we concentrate on big development infrastructure projects that don't have a meaningful impact on the lives of the common man and most importantly, we fail to address ethnic/clan differences that have existed for decades or as in the case of Ethiopia, centuries...
It's almost like it's sabotage. 😔
@@Avanguard4128 hopefully :(
What you forgot is a stable political and justice system (and security).
Foreign Direct Investment will not increase (atm Africa has a net outflow even with foreign aid), unless it investors can be certain they have rights and there are rules. And it is somewhat secure (less risk compared to other investment targets to put up a plant, eg in India or Turkey or Vietnam or Mexico etc etc).
And you know, Africa is filled with Africans LMAO
@ThE pUrPle KoMmuNiSt Name one successful black run country, Wakanda doesn't count commie
@@SarionFetecuse Botswana, a few islands off Africa's coast
Should look Ethiopia as an example
@@SarionFetecuse Your oblique method of analysing for an example of a successful Black-led country is pathetic. Africa has had many successful empires and kingdoms over the years. It geographic location and climate has been a curse for the continent, which is a debilitating factor that both Europeans and the Chinese have not had for one.
But hark back to a time when Europe was a back-water. In the earliest civilisations of the ancient period of human history, North Africa was more advanced than Mediterranean Europe and far more advanced than non-Mediterranean Europe. Yet today the opposite relationship is observed (Non-Mediterranean Europe is also more advanced than Mediterranean Europe today too). So the question that would’ve been asked back then was “name a successful European civilisation?”.
Then eventually Rome happened, but that too eventually came to an end and the Caliphates of the Fertile Crescent once again outstripped Europe in science and culture. Granted sub-Saharan Africa has had a poorer performance than the North pretty much through the entirety of history, but again I quote the geographic difficulties of the sub-Sahara and also point out Botswana and Gabon as two exceptional sub- Saharan African countries on the mainland that are growing at high rates and have eliminated so much poverty. Then you have the Seychelles, Cabo Verde and São Tomé & Principe as examples of coastal island nations that have seen very high economic and social progress.
Meanwhile during all of the this, China and India were either keeping par with North Africa’s advances or surpassing them. And Europeans passing them out was an aberration to the normal course of history, but now they are both on a significant growth path and catching up.
So I ask you “Gudsang”, what the f**k are you on about? 🧐
Africa’s tech scene has really been exploding onto the global stage over the past few years
@@BlueMax717 South Africa, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Egypt, and Ethiopia
That's a service industry, the key part of economic growth for developing country is manufacturing
crypto
I don’t see any devices Americans use saying “Made in Africa” but I certainly see a lot made from China, India, Japan, Korea and occasionally some Asian countries we went to war with or had operations in like Philippines, Vietnam, etc. What tech is being made in Africa that changes how we do anything or is better in any way than something already on the market?
This was interesting, but I'm wondering if you considered the impact of debt and IMF structural adjustment programs. I think one of the reasons that so many countries in Africa court foreign direct investment and don't always prioritize education is because, under SAPs they are required to decrease public spending and encourage foreign investment. I don't think China faced the same limitation
Exactly
what are SAPs?
SAPs or structural adjustment programs refer to short-term debt relief issued to highly-indebted countries by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) under specific terms reflecting a neoliberal worldview (decreasing public spending, attracting foreign direct investment and facilitating trade). It was believed that these reforms would lead to economic prosperity and to be fair, they have been credited for managing hyper-inflation (though I'm not sure how much of this can be attributed to SAPs but that's a topic for another day). However, since their implementation, poverty has spread, corruption has grown and life expectancy actually declined. It's widely believed that these reforms undermined development and condemned recipient countries to a state of perpetual poverty.
This is a complicated topic and very politically charged (Bob Geldof in particular has a reputation for being...colorful...), but regardless of where your personal politics lie, I think it's fair to say that these programs severely restrict many African countries' macroeconomic policy and begs the question, what impact will they have on recipient countries' (specifically those in Africa) capacity to replicate China's success: ips-dc.org/structural_adjustment_programs/
@@scarscanbebeautiful so it's basically forcing austerity
@@purplewine7362 Well you didn't managed your debt so some loan shark is here to manage it for you, so what else did you expect would have happened?
I'm in one of the most "richest" african economys and I can say that politicians have there priorities wrong, they wanna take the money that is now but not make more so they can take . Kinda sad cause I see how people that I knew fly into poverty as the years go by( we just getting more poor).
Which one is that?
polititians steal money everywhere.
Probably South Africa
It’s things like that make investing in Africa difficult.
@@QH96 He's probably from here. And he's right the governing party had its priorities wrong. But now they lost the elections. They better step up or get kicked out.
I think this gives short shrift to the main thing that causes development like China had - policy changes. It's not that he doesn't mention it, but it's like a footnote in a lengthy video about demographics and statistics. In the 70s, Deng Xiaoping and his underlings implemented a series of market reforms. They weren't as broad as those of us in the west would have preferred, but when you go from full socialism to 'partial capitalism' almost overnight for more than a billion people, the resulting rise in living standards has been breathtaking. There's still alot of ways Chinese citizens are denied property rights, but going from no economic freedoms to some for a billion people is a HUGE thing. And while these started small as little 'special zones' where markets were allowed their success caused their expansion over the decades and especially in the 90s.
Africa, as Wendover briefly admitted, is 54 different nations. And despite the demographic indicators, many of these nations are nowhere near any great expansion of economic freedom. Some actually have been making progress. Mauritius for example. If you want an Africa-wide economic revolution, it would require an Africa-wide policy change revolution. And that just doesn't seem likely. A few countries will continue moving in the right direction, and maybe a few will learn the lesson and follow their example. I do think Africa is making some progress. But I feel like someone annointed Africa as the sexy thing to talk about and is ahead of the actual policy progress on the ground.
The best thing we could do is simply to allow and encourage free trade with the countries making policy progress and stop destabilizing their economy with well-intentioned, but poorly executed aid. Focus on removing barriers to their development rather than trying to prop them up. Development is hard. Talk to middle-ages Europe about it. It can't be forced from the outside. All we as outsiders can do is try to not throw additional obstacles in front of them.
Change can be revolutionary and evolutionary, it's harder and takes longer but continental change can occur without a continental policymaking body and perhaps with greater effectiveness
Aid often does more harm than good. Ship in a million free shoes for African school children and you put a hundred African shoemakers out of business, setting their economy back even further.
@@wendellsmith6638 100% agree. There was a developmental economist I read an interview with who was particularly outspoken on this topic. He said his number one prescription for countries trying to develop was 'property rights', but his number one piece of advice to those in the west who want to help was 'Stop helping, because you're really bad at it.' No business can compete with free. When you pump epic amounts of food aid into a country experiencing a famine, it puts local farmers out of business because they can't compete with 'free' and thus the famine gets worse the next year, and the next. Flooding countries with money is just as bad because that money invariably gets stolen by the corrupt governments that are responsible for the lack of development in the first place...thereby improving their ability to stay in power. Even paying for infrastructure improvements is usually a waste. Not always...but usually.
@@brianmulholland2467 Corrupt governments were put in place by the western US lead IMF which placed restrictions on what these countries could produce thereby making them even more dependent on foreign aid. The west never gives out freebies for nothing. Corporate owned US governments could care less about countries unless they have something they want to make money from.
@@wendellsmith6638 ok econ PhD
It feels pretty strange to see so much time dedicated to that "demographic dividend" portion without addressing the logical next step when all of those working age people become retirement age people and that small number of children become the working age population. Seems like a recipe for collapse to me.
That's the issue governments and large companies are going to run into in the coming decades.
So much growth is predicated on being able to pay it off in the future with extra resources, that when nations start seeing contractions from smaller populations, that's going to be significant.
The other option is mass immigration from regions with excess population to bolster the demographics, but that's a temporary solution.
Check what is the máx. life span of Africans from different countries and you will see that ageing is not a problem at present, but quality of life (health, education and social support) is the big problem for the XXI century.
I think he didn't choose to mention it as it has been a known point for long already, and the main thing here may just be to compare whether Africa as a whole right now is setting up to look like how China was right before it economically expanded like crazy. But yeah, I did realize that the obvious point that this demographic dividend had immediately shown repercussions after the large economic booms it provided (especially China) - was omitted.
Well you'd expect those developed nations to use their development to prevent that from happening
@@barta5ot-395 They did, and a lot of them are either slowing it down, or messed up because no one had encountered this before.
12:56 "... family planning program have seen some success in certain countries." Showing a clip from Thailand. That's a nice touch. Thailand is one of those countries.
@@user-op8fg3ny3j the license plate on the truck is from "Krabi" (Thai: กระบี่) province in Southern Thailand with predominant Muslim population.
@@user-op8fg3ny3j I think it's a Thai license plate? Not sure though. But Thailand has a small Muslim minority either way.
Funny how the women in hijab detail made it look just like Indonesia, but not quite (the cars for one, they're not really models or brands that are common here as far as I can tell)
Didn't know there were Muslims in southern Thailand... Makes sense being next to Malaysia I suppose
@@xpusostomos there was a whole episode where the Muslims in South Thailand wanted to join Malaysia and leave Thailand, with several militant groups leading the charge
While you brought up really great points, I do think that it will be hard for Africa to even scratch the economic success that China has achieved. While Africa has indeed the potential, comparing it to China is kind of misleading. China is governed by one authority, while Africa is governed by multiple different powers with different and opposing goals/priorities. Ultimately that could be a hinderance for Africa’s growth. I do however believe that with Chinas commitment to large infrastructure investment into Africa will better help connect neighbouring countries to work together to achieve economic prosperity.
Even with huge foregin investments flowing massively into african countries, there is still one thing that cant be overhopped in one night - people mentality.
Africans will need decades to grab the fate in their own hands, embrace freedom and private economic initiative and forget about constant wars, oligarchy and corruption. Its hard for every nation in the world, but for some extreme cases in Africa its the hardest thing ever. But there is also hope, like Botswana.
So maybe they will make it into a better world in other way than running to Europe. I wish Africans only success.
China's investments into Africa is more on par with exploiting it for China's own gain than in anyway propping up African nations for African prosperity and growth.
watch the whole video before commenting
Africa is not a country dude!!!!!!!!
Everyone in this forum seems to have an incredibly unrealistic approach to the history and development of the African continent. It still belongs to Europe and is overwhelmingly forced to play by their rules. Capital from the extrapolation of it’s rich resources goes back to stock markets in London and Paris. It’s still a colony but now of European corporations and bad American money lending. China never had to overcome that.
I would say that this won't happen to the extent of China. China (whether you like their form of Govt or not) was a cohesive society with a government that was able to push their peoples into doing whatever they wanted. China had a lot of money pumped into it by the west around the dawn of the open door policy. Transportation into the interior of China took decades and Africa doesn't have these levels. Africa much like China was is riddled with corruption however, Africa has large religious tensions and separatist movements that haven't been crushed much like they were in China. South Africa has good infrastructure but the rest of Africa not so much and there's minimal navigable rivers in Africa like the Danube for Europe. Africa will have a growth economically but the way it's compared to China is strange as it would make more sense to use this comparison for India which has similar trends, better infrastructure and more established sectors yet is still emerging.
When China was "pushing it's people to do what they wanted", it was a basket case. When they loosened up and let the people do what THEY wanted, they achieved success.
India and Brazil are all countries of the future, and there is everything in the future.
Sounds like a proper analysis!
I would like to add that China's history and identity (very proud people like iranians and turkish people) also helps in their work ethic and cohesiveness. There is a collective sense of being able to solve problems themselves without external support. Very interesting!
@@xpusostomos China never let it's people the ability to do what they wanted. They just gave the appearance or doing so.
@@xpusostomos No they did not loosen up, they embraced command capitalism and have started tightening control over certain industries. In fact the behaviour of the Chinese citizen in mainland China improved after the CCP introduced the social credit system. Not only did it make Chinese citizens follow the govt line. It gave everyone there a reason to be good samaritan, instead of thinking of only themselves. For instance no longer would the Chinese citizen ignore an unattended very young child crossing into busy traffic on the roads and people started helping each other.
We’re comparing a continent to a country so yeah i wonder what that answer will be. It’s up to the countries within to see if they will develop quickly
🛎🛎🛎🛎🛎🛎🛎
@Friendly Bane Unless of course you're planning to colonize 'em. Then priorities start to shift
And this is acknowledged in the video, but I guess this comment kinda serves as a TLDW..
@@illuminite Spoiler warning? Lol
A few countries will become developed
Growing up as a youth in Uganda I've noticed a few things that hinder our development.
1. There are a lot of ethnicities, which may not be a bad thing, but it needs the right type of governance.
2. We have next to zero skills and our leaders have done nothing to improve them.
3. There's a weak mentality of quick success.
4. We are constantly blaming European colonialism but Europeans left over 50 years ago. Every place on earth was at some point under colonialism
What do you mean by quick success?
short answer: NO
slightly less short answer: NO due to many factors like culture, demographics, policies etc ...
(future peeps in year 2100 or 2200 do reply here and let us know the result, thanks)
This comparison is literally crazy 😂😂😂😭. Your analogy of Europe being grouped with Africa being grouped together is completely false. 60% of European trade is with other European Countries while in Africa it is 16%, African and European economies are not similar, it is possible for Nigeria to be booming while Zimbabwe is in recession. Africa is not nearly as economically interlinked as you make out. To then compare a region with 54 sovereign countries to 1 country that had 1 authoritarian government and is ethnically homogeneous is literally horrendous.
That's the Western international liberal mindset. They're simply unable to grasp reality since their fundamental belief is that all humans are equal in every single way. It's why they believed India would overtake China as a superpower in 2020, but it's actually China that has shot way past them.
Yes, check out his Francafrique video. Also, with so many undeveloped countries, there are natural as well as unnatural reasons that lots of trade has to happen with other continents.
Did you even watch the video?
Gosh, How much do I have to repeat this to these illiterates in the comment sections. He literally mentioned that China is 1 country and Africa is 54 countries and pure data comparision is narrow and isn't going to cover everything in the discussion. And you people in the comment section are screaming because he didn't cover politic, because that's the only thing you brainlets can argue day after day on the internet without concrete proof and data, unlike statistic and demographic.
@@RealLotto You’ve literally said it yourself, it’s a essentially a pointless video that only pushes forward the stereotype of Africa being grouped together.
It's virtually impossible to generalize Africa, as there's so many variables and factors, depending on the country you're in. For all the instability and insecurity plaging countries like Sudan/South Sudan, there's countries such as Botswana that have seen steady economic growth that's helping it to transition into a developed economy, vastly improved infrastructure, solid public education and a stable democracy.
As always I really enjoyed the data breakdown, but I think this video in particular didn't sit super well for me because it felt too much like looking at these two places in the world as a black box, and comparing things that don't warrant a direct comparison (country with one government vs continent with dozens). I appreciated the final note that you made that it's hard to say Africa would be the next China because of all the individual successes that would need to happen, but I think you could've gone further. This just overall felt like a really Western, OECD way to look at economies and cultures and governments that don't run like European/American models and trying to make predictions out of them, which doesn't feel very accurate and ignores a lot of variables. Of course, this topic is hard to discuss in a 15 minute TH-cam video, and could probably warrant its own Econ textbook or class, so as always kudos to you Wendover for tackling these hard subjects. I just feel like this one could have been more nuanced than you made it.
can you say what particularly important nuances were not mentioned here?
I would've agreed with you if his conclusion was 'these countries really need FREEDOM and trade dealz', but that wasn't his argument at all...
any topic will have an endless number of neuances.
for a topic as big as economics, generalizations are crucial to keep the topic within a 15 minute youtube video that humans with notoriously short attention spans will watch
but generalizing for engagement and time efficiency comes at the cost of context and unexplained nuance
If the content is not balanced correctly you could end up with
a completely boring monologue of a college textbook
or content too short and uninformative leaving people with a narrow, unrealistic/biased perspective
(you called it a black box, more commonly referred to as twitter)
Overall i think Wendover has a good spot on the scale of entertaining vs informative
he pointed out that these indicators only were just a part of the story, and basically every comment is pointing out that too
Wendover could be better but it also could be a lot worse.. at least he isnt on tiktok
@@KaterynaM_UA He spent the whole video talking about demographics. Nothing about the unstable politics of the region. (Chinas explosive growth since the 90s has been due to their abandonment of Communism and opening up to the west, not demographics) This would have to be by far the worst Wendover video I have seen. I don't know exactly why he chose not to focus on the politics of the region that is actually holding Africa back but I've got a pretty good idea.
Lol some of these responses are weird, this is a perfectly reasonable and valid critique.
China was able to grow because it leveraged its large population for economic growth and the was able to stay independent of western meddling to keep its industry competitive. Most African counties have neither of these. I could see Nigeria, Ethiopia, the North African countries, and the few stable democracies like Botswana and Ghana growing like China, but until most countries can be allowed to grow democratically, things won’t get better.
What about South Africa
“Independent of western meddling” lmao yeah like decent labor laws and societal peace.
China THRIVED because western countries outsourced cheap labor to them
@@Clark_Kent_ZA that is only one, there are many others that need developing
Unlike Korea who leveraged their small population, I suppose... This has nothing to do what the CCP did. Their success is despite what the CCP did. It's all about the ambition and hard work of the Chinese people.
@@jobic4207If you can't see the ways the west would have exploited their leverage over the Chinese if they relied on them economically in anyway while simultaneously trying to grow, then I have a history lesson for you buddy... Or maybe I don't, you guys aren't exactly known for multiple point of views
I agree. Countries like Ghana, Rwanda, and Botswana are doing really well and will likely be first world countries in a few decades if not years. Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Egypt, and Nigeria all have lots of potential to be regional if not global power houses but are stuck at crossroads right now and their futures are still up for debate. Somalia, the Sudan’s, and chad are stuck in states of warfare and futures are unknown and South Africa ever since Mandela left has just been slipping.
What would be their niche in the economy?
I think some states do have the potential to become successful-likely the more stable ones like Ghana, Botswana, Kenya, Tanzania, etc.
But I think a vast majority of African states will likely disintegrate within the coming century-whether that be through new unions or secessionist movements: Sudan, Ethiopia, etc.
If we also take into account the increasing frequency of coups, and the lack of political willpower from the African Union, I think it’s likely there might even be continental wars in Africa over different resources-like water wars, which’ll result in winners and losers.
So yeah, good video. And I agree with the conclusion. Some will become developed nations, but others will likely lag behind.
I would figure that the coastal states with good access to the world's oceans and a sizeable pool of potential manufacturing workers will emulate China's rise. All they need is that sweet foreign investment
100% correct. The big issue with African countries going back is that they did not form organically in any way. Peoples who do not consider themselves fellow citizens were pushed together by foreign nations whose interest was to extract material resources from them and we see the effects of that with things like secessionist movements, or governments dominated by a single ethnic group who rule over others.
@@2x2is22 See that's what you'd assume but that isn't always a constant. Geography is obviously important to the development of a nation, but good governance is even more important.
Sudan for instance, is in the position to be a mediator between North and Sub-saharan Africa--but due to bad government it's largely lost any benefits that it could've had.
Conversely, you've got states like Rwanda, which despite having cracked down severely on civil liberties, is for the most part a relatively stable state.
So yeah, I think it has to do primarily with governance and the willpower of said government.
@@krombopulos_michael See there's this really great book about that very topic, it's called "Worldmaking after Empire". The essential claim is that post-colonial states, by and large, didn't focus on crafting a national identity, rather they focused on carving out a position on the world stage.
This is largely why you don't see Germanies or Frances in Africa, because that wasn't the goal. The goal was independence and holding it all together once attained.
We even see this with the post-colonial movements that swept the continent: panafricanism, panarabism, etc. All of which held a very loosely defined roadmap.
Ironically, this was actually one of the primary debates after decolonization: a United States of Africa or an Africa of independent states. The compromise is the modern African Union.
To not drag this out too long, this desire to carve out a slot on the world stage is also why after decolonization. African states made a sincere effort to prevent the redrawing of their borders: because it would cause a chain reaction that likely would've embroiled the continent in a series of bloody wars.
It's really fascinating imo.
@Kazeshini Hijacker Yeah that's true as well. With Senegambia it's pretty interesting because ethnically the regions overlap almost entirely. Iirc the main reason why the union didn't work was because Gambia felt as though Dakar would hold too much power.
And I think had Dakar alleviated those concerns better than the union likely could've worked out.
That's why I think good governance can make or break a country.
I'm cheering for Africa but the China comparison is a bit sloppy
1) China was at some point the richest nation into the world. The poverty it faced in the 20th century was more an aberration than a norm
2) China had a lot of investment and know-how pour in once communism relaxed, from its diaspora populations (Hong Kong Taiwan etc)
3) The demographic dividend may have worked for China but I'm doubtful it will work for Africa. Automation as well as climate change may mean that it's youthful population is more a burden than benefit. Of course, I hope I'm wrong..
Youthful populations will never became a burden
@@theburden9920 they actually can be, the cost of education and other social programs can be prohibitive due to growth rates
Africa is growing faster than its infrastructure can improve
Africa's biggest enemy now is automation. China was lucky to have made in time
You are missing an important factor in all these statistics. CULTURE! I once had an African man who I worked with explain that in his culture " To raise himself up, all he had to do, was knock everyone around him down" I was so stunned by this, that we got into a argument and I realized that we were just simply so far apart in our belief systems that was no going forward. I am not saying that this is a scientific study, or significant but it sure was eye opening.
You discuss the dependency ratio without discussing the underlying issue China faces that Africa does not: children eventually become working age adults. Retirees do not.
I agree.
"Retirement" is a western concept. In Asia, people work as long as they can and when they can't work, they look after their grandchildren. The average Asian cannot understand why Americans (and Europeans) are so lazy.
Also, the vast majority of people in Africa never reach what we would consider old age.
@@dirremoire Actually they do retire and expect their kids to look after them. For the better or worse, Asia is becoming similar to the west in that sense.
Lazy is a strong word, the average asian doesnt understand why americans are so heartless towards their parents.
Hmm, the point is this, with less children to take care of there will be more disposable income and greater quality of life. This will lead to growth. Now we get to an inverse pyramid where one child will have to take care of several retirees, this is possible through social programs funded by the previous growth as long as goverments are prudent. If not you get a situation like China
Firstly, Africa need a stable political environment to start booming economically.
would you like that with a side of 6yr civil war or a 3 yr civil war with rampant dictatorship?
Arabic Africa is more connected to Europe and middle East, than to the Sub Saharan Africa. So, there are at least two economic units.
The main flaw of this analysis is portraying Africa as a unified population. Africa's more like Europe than China in terms of demographics.
Note that African governments are not at war with other. Moreover, there is a lot of trade going on. Those factors count much more that a "unified" population. Hell, we're not even unified in the US.
@@dirremoire right but there's a major difference in how China achieved their current economic status so comparing the two on the basis of what China did is flawed. That's literally why I said Africa is more like Europe. You've listed one of the reasons for why that is already.
IMO he adresses that issue pretty clearly in the video..
It's not flawed at all because this video did NOT portray it this way, as Aemmel Pear said. This video acknowledges that one is a continent of 54 countries while China is just one, so it was implied that it's much easier to manage one country than 54 countries.
I would in fact say, your comment is misleading in that it implies this video mis-analysed this, when it wasn't at all the case.
@@dirremoire the disunity of the African continent is incomparable to the disunity of American politics, these are 54 countries all with their own little political disunity, cultural disunity, different values, different religions, different ways of life, Americans being part of a red or blue political party is just nowhere near complicated as Africa
Very important factor: education. China built modern education system since the first day of independence. And 90+% had certain level of education when China opened up at 1979.
90%.. meaning 10% had no education whatsoever, 40% dropped out before finishing primary school and 70% didn't graduate primary school. Not exactly impressive.
@@xpusostomos you know what i love? There are always people who are trying make China look bad
@xpusostomos chinese place education as as very important criteria in their culture. Please look at the criteria for university entrance and numbers of top university.
We dont know where you got the info of 40% from.
It looks that you know nothing of china chinese.
@@wongth8689 don't show your complete ignorance.. the accepted stat in China in 1979 was the 9-6-3 rule.. 90% started primary school, 60% finished it, 30% graduated primary. Do some research instead of spouting nonsense.
@@foxskaminer I don't consider it "bad". Look at education numbers in western countries compared to today weren't so impressive. Success isn't all about education.
whenever I read about Africa sometimes I am literally crying...its so sad...we don't have true leaders in Africa...its just people running the country not leaders!
Instead of comparing Africa I think India would have been a better candidate.
India is just entering the phase of demographic dividend that china entered two decades ago with dependency ratio going just below 50.
And moreover india has many advantages regarding many sunrise sectors as well like AI/ML, renewable tech, auto and software.
I see a significant rise with some luck and good policies.
The fact is Wendover Never ever talks about India whatsoever, He’s Biased. Watch Literally any video of his Video. He never ever mention India!! Even in a Vaccine Video of his He did not mention “India” when India is Largest Manufacturer of Vaccine
@@Mr025lucky any reason
@@Nishantpatale9423 Don’t know, Wendover just never ever mentions or talk about India at all. I think he have some personal issues with India or maybe He’s Racist for Indians 🤣
one country overshadowed by india is already doing what china did before becoming the manufacturing powerhouse. the country is bangladesh.
even wendover will start talking about it soon.
@@jahan442 yeah it's good....but fundamentalism will hit you hard.
I fail to similarities between, for example Egypt , Kongo and South Africa
Poverty 🤷🏼♂️
Indeed, Africa is a very diverse continent with only a few related by their colonial pasts of all things, it just doesn't make sense.
Economic similarities are numerous, even if culture and politics differ.
Said the same about South Korea, China, Vietnam, Bangladesh...
Yeah we can't just africa he's gotta mention the country
I don't know about the viability... a wise man once said: _it's all so tiresome_
This video tells me that for nations to prosper it must invest in its people.
Pfft. The over educated who don't know what they're talking about
That's been pretty clear to workers for some time now. Happy you realize it now too! :)
A nations greatest resource is its people after all.
Really??
What I got out of it is that an economy can grow faster if it invests in businesses instead of in children or the elderly.
Which is a very troubling and immoral conclusion. But it's what the data suggests.
What you should get out of the video is that no amount of money or education can save Africa
Really hoping my country, South Africa, pulls up its socks and delivers the amazing quality of life it is able to give its citizens. We have a proper functioning democracy with incredible freedoms that have only been dampered by corruption.
Calling South Africa a "proper functioning democracy" is one hell of an euphemism. Doesn't the same non-ideological party of power get elected every single time since the 90s?
@@user-sm5sj6mg2t With ever decreasing support sure. Also our recent local elections have booted the ANC (which is very much idealogically aligned btw?) out of major metros. There's nothing wrong with their ideaology - just their inability to keep out rampant corruption. But I'm more referring to functioning courts, public protectors, free press and open economy. Eskom kinda shit ngl but we getting there
@@user-sm5sj6mg2t Fellow South African here -> it’s absolutely correct to say that the ANC has been elected since the 90s, but I think what the comment is really trying to say is that our citizens have the ability to vote and elect their own representatives in reliable elections. (which is pretty noteworthy in an African context)
To add to that, support for the ANC has been declining steadily for at least 10 years, we had municipal elections recently and the ANC didn’t even come out with a majority. Plus the anti-Zuma anti-corruption wing of the party is now just barley the majority. Also - the ANC is very ideological, I’m not sure where you got the idea that they aren’t.
South Africa has a lot of potential as a country, and similarly to China, it can extract that potential by investing heavily into its manufacturing sector and incentivising foreign companies to move there with reduced tax rates. At the moment the main problem is that taxes are too high. Unreliable electricity and crime also play large factors of course, but those are solved with foreign investment.
Nah we’re fucked bru
I think the gathering of data is just as amazing as the presentation of the analytics.
Keep it up sir!
Wendover: The thing holding Africa back is the people...
It’s true. If you took everyone from Ghana and put them in Germany, and took everyone from Germany and put them in Ghana, which country would look developed in 50 years?
Right, I think the people have been corrupted by the leaders. In some African countries you can’t do anything without corrupt money been involved and I believe African governments have created that kind of society over the last couple of decades. When Africans do move to a more developed and less corrupt countries they are actually less or not corrupt.
@Kazeshini Hijacker is that true? Like when the Haitians massacred the white French and now Haiti is such a great place to live?
@@grandtheftavocado If you took Germany in the 16th century and subjected it to centuries of colonisation, arbitrary division and extratraction of resources I am not sure that it'd look crash hot either.
Kind of racism?
Language wasn't mentioned, but it's important because it puts up barriers to regional cooperation. China has one primary language (Mandarin) while Africa a dozen (French, English, Portuguese, Arabic, etc) -- or thousands if you count local/tribal languages.
Yeah, no. China has historically been divided into a dozen languages, even variants of Mandarin couldn't understand the one used right now. There's Mongol, Manchu, Mandarin, Cantonese and plenty of others.
European languages are not primary to Africans.
@@apollo1694 have u heard of Putonghua?
@@apollo1694 They are dialects. Speaking may be different, but the writing remains the same since 2000 years ago.
South Africa alone has 12 official languages..
For economic growth, you need four main things. A centralized government with simple, fair, and uniform laws. A government that allows individual freedom and doesn't impinge on individual rights through regulation or excessive taxation. An impartial court system to enforce contracts and adjudicate criminal matters. A culture of hard work, morality and business ethics with an anti-corruption emphasis.
You're comparing one nation under a single administration to a continent of 54 countries who are not always so keen to cooperate with one another. This isn't comparable. This is like comparing South America to Israel. As someone who was born, lives, and works in Africa, I feel that this video is really inaccurate nor can you compare China to Africa.
I would send him emails from you and other African citizens
South America and Israel have very different population numbers. If they didn't that would have made for an interesting comparison.
To be fair thats kind of the thing he concludes with isnt it?
Did ya watch the whole thing? Literally says just that in the end.
A video comparing the two, then saying they can't be compared is kinda weird. Like, a comparison is made only to point out you can't do that really.
Hello! This video made me think about something else. Since most your videos reflect ideas i too think about during my travels, i was wondering if you'd be interested in making a video comparing the economies of north africa, sub Saharan africa (though you grouped both in this video, i do believe them to be quite dif, given northern Africa's connection to the European economy etc) and central and south america's economy. And if possible, the violence that exists in those areas, that i feel are an impediment to the local economies (ex.: drug violence in south and central america). I also like to look at the historical existence of violence (ex.:wars) and how they influenced the development of economies. As current developed states seem to not have any or residual internal conflict, even though wars have also been seen to impulse technological advances.
Short answer is no, the long answer is never.
This video is a great example of the law that says that any headline that ends with a question mark can be answered with "no". One of the things that helped China along was the fact that it had continuity of culture and history for like hundreds, if not thousands of years. African countries, let alone the entire continent often doesn't have the luxury of a long term history of stability and cultural unity that China (at least, eastern China, obviously tibet was fairly culturally distinct).
Its a lot easier for a country to have an economic expansion if it has a foundation to build on.
People who read and write Chinese know that China don't have continuity of culture and history. This idea is invented after Meiji Restoration, at that time Japan invented a concept that Emperor bloodline is continuous (萬世一系). The Qing kingdom (not Chinese Qing) borrow the concept from Japan and invent itself as continuous culture. The problem is that even Qing itself is not continuous. Manchu (i.e. Qing) occupation has not much difference from Russian occupation or any foreign occupation except Manchu occupy more than 90% territory and Russian occupied less than 10%, and Manchu is less civilized compared to Russia.
I must say even Ming kingdom (明) and Han kingdom (漢) have completely different culture, religion and bureaucracy even their kings have same race.
Lot of questionable claims in this video. Economic interconnectedness alone isn't enough to merit looking at Africa as a whole. Some countries, such as Kenya, have a pretty good shot of experiencing rapid growth, but many countries will be left behind.
@@user-cc7vx7sw4z great analysis
As they should be...Africa just needs a great example to follow like Japan was for Singapore and South Korea in the 1960s. I hate it when Development Economists lump the whole of Africa together but never attempt that when talking about other continents. It would take centuries for Africa to achieve any form of convergence to ACTUALLY implement a unique continent-wide agenda! The faster would actually be African Nations competing amongst themselves and imitating one another. This let's unite is just an avenue to sing kumbaya under a rainbow: it's a waste of time and resources and would remain a fantasy for years to come.
He literally said it in the video. He said that it's different because China is one and Africa is a group. Did you not watch?
That shot of Nairobi National park in Kenya with the Zebras and the City in the background is fire👍
According to the authors of "Empty Planet," standing alongside education is cell phone usage as relates to Africa's fertility rate. They make a persuasive argument that Africa's population is not going to increase as fast as predicted by the UN, necessarily positively affecting the dependency rate as I understand your argument. Cell phone penetration which includes persons who don't own a phone but have regular access to one now stands at 76%.
When will you, the western world,stop speaking ill of African countries?We do not require any white Messiah for our economies to grow strong, the only thing we expect of you is fair trade devoid of any form of adult-supervision!!
Keep that in mind!
@@Avanguard4128 not saying the other guy is right, but how the heck is someone doubting Africa's future population growth speaking ill of African countries?
I've read that book and this was based on Kenya alone, where I'm from. African countries are difficult to predict in terms of fertility issues. Like Uganda, Tanzania, Nigeria have hardly reduced their fertility since 60/70s as the video notes. I'm not very optimistic...
@@jameskamotho7513 You're not optimistic regarding the video's thesis or fertility rates in Africa. Because I looked at the fertility rates of the 3 countries you mentioned and others in Africa and I found fertility rates peaking around 1990 and dropping, sometimes precipitously, since 2010. For example, regarding Uganda, Tanzania, and Nigeria, fertility rates form 2010/2020 are 6.87/4.82, 5.43/4.83 and 5.84/5.43 respectively for these 3 countries. I found fertility drops year-over-year in all these countries since at least the 90s. Please bear in mind I have no expertise in Africa or demographics. I live in the US. You may appear optimistic, but something like 70% of Americans think the country is "on the wrong track." 🙂
@@laurabrown5288 sure
I personally don’t like comparing a whole continent to that of a country. I get the point being made but it simplifies the continent as all the countries in it are not the same. Countries within the continent most def have an high potential of growth.
Yeah. It took two world wars for Europe to decide to unify. Even then it took big actions from major powers before the rest came together. And now one of the big players has backed out.
he kind of implied this at the end if you watched the entire thing
@@stevenroshni1228 i mean they did not really unify just found out that cooperation and sharing was a better idea than going for another war, The African Union a already exist be name and some country has create economic block whit each other like what the US, canada and mexico did (USMCA)
we know that a continental economic unity can be greatly beneficial for the member
Many (most) of the African nations share the same struggles at the moment. This video was a potential roadmap to securing a better economic outlook in the future. You can't lump all of the countries together in many respects, but these policies would apply to most sub-Saharan nations in the present, which is why it's appropriate to generalize in this case.
just in the last two months or so , at least two coup d'etat have happened in Africa , one in Mali , another one in Guinea , and these are just the two I recall off my head ...and i am not even going to mention the countless wars that are ongoing and terrorism and what have you ...as I am typing Adis Abeba is about to fall to the Tigray rebels .....and you still want to compare Africa with a centrally governed country like China that has only one party system....
I think the word got to Wendover that Money & Macro was coming for him, this video is much more careful (and better) than the last.
My take though is that the big thing that people get wrong about China's explosive growth is that it spent decades being run into the ground. The country was essentially obliterated on the economic front, but much of the deeply ingrained patterns and habits of China's population survived and most of it's growth can be attributed to a "bounce back" to where it would have been if Mao hadn't been in charge. It really matters where you start the comparison from, dial it back 300 years and China's economic success doesn't look that unusual compared to Europe's.
When it comes to Africa (at least below the Sahara) there isn't a recent prior successful base to bounce back from, Africa has been poor for the last 400 years (the Arab and Atlantic slaves trades did a lot to contribute to this it must be admitted). Africa is surely going to grow a lot, just don't expect it to be anything like as quick as China's was, especially as the leading countries aren't sitting still themselves.
And one really big thing that's a huge problem for Africa but not China: the dozens and dozens of independence wars that are going to have to be fought this century-by far the worst legacy of colonialism.
Europe was raided for slaves for centuries, so was the ME and Asia, sorry but blaming slavery over and over is ridiculous. Not to mention when Europeans discovered Africa they didn't even have the wheel or 2 story buildings, what's your excuse there?
@@mattstorm6568 Nothing mentioned in your comment is an argument. It's just miscellaneous facts that might prove your beliefs right, which aren't even obviously related to the statement of "slavery held back Africa". Obviously, Slavery isn't the only reason why Africa is weak, and they would just be a little stronger without slavery as they are nomadic people primarily. (Most African countries only grew by taking advantage of European and American powers, some hired Europeans as government officials, others depended on drones and other technology rather than infrastructure building to gain influence on the world stage, etc.) However, please collect better arguments in the future.
@@popopop984 I wasn't making arguments I was stating facts which I notice you don't dispute so what was even the point of your reply to me?
@@mattstorm6568 Ancient Egyptians were making war with chariots almost 1000 years before Homer was born.
@@georgebrantley776 Lol. The ole Egyptians defense. I think we all know what people mean when they speak of Africa. Egyptians are Arab.
It would be interesting/important to do this same overview for the different regions of Africa... see which one is more likely see the development first.
probably the islands in the indian ocean off of east africa including madagascar if i had to guess.
I'd say most likely South Africa or the Western region around Nigeria
the little "glitch" around 7:56 is the time-lapse camera moving past a "no fishing" sign. lucky pause
The trouble is, the vast majority of politicians are only in it for themselves, they pursue big development projects (Kenya's Lamu port for example) because those are flashy while ignoring the actual people. There is this culture of "The people serve the Government" and not the other way around.
Depends. I don’t know much about this port but big investments mean more jobs, which means more people, which means more demand and purchasing power, which means more investment. Not saying this port was a good idea but investment is pretty much the easiest way to modernize and help a country.
@@jobic4207 Oh the port was just an example it's barely even connected to the nations transportations systems. But I'll contrast that with the culture developed by the education, its a very "shut up and listen" type thing, where questions are punished and grades are prioritised to a stupid degree. Having the projects would be great, if equal or greater emphasis were put on the people who can create the ecosystem for them.
This kind of statement applies to every country. Do you think Nancy Pelosi or Boris Johnson actually care about the people?
@@JanbluTheDerg Stop misleading people. The port was built with the intention of supplying Ethiopia and S.Sudan. Roads, a Railway, A pipeline, a refinery and resort cities have mostly been constructed to cater for this change.
I'd expect Africa to start really taking off around the 2050s and 2060s personally, it will grow over the next few decades, sure, but at something like 4-5% I'd expect, as it focuses it's efforts on just bringing up it's children, educating them, creating housing, and just generally getting the basics of a functioning society in place for a society that is rapidly growing in size.
I guess I learned enough from my economic development course back in 2015 that I predicted the conclusion of this video, except I had one extra in mind:
Political and social stability. There’s little benefit to starting any enterprise if some militia can come by and take it from you.
Gosh, How much do I have to repeat this to these illiterates in the comment sections. He literally mentioned that China is 1 country and Africa is 54 countries and pure data comparision is narrow and isn't going to cover everything in the discussion.This is a video focusing on data analyzation, and you people in the comment section are screaming because he didn't cover politic, because that's the only thing you brainlets can argue day after day on the internet without concrete proof and data, unlike statistic and demographic.
The logic at ~ the 3 min mark seems very flawed... If you take the current African GDP as a fixed number, you'll of course find a year when it was equivalent in China, but that provides exactly zero information... What you should care about are the rates of change and any factors relevant to GDP and how similar/different these factors are.
Botswana is pretty well on the way
I think the point is to show exactly how far behind Africa is, and use that to show just how far they could get in the near future if they follow the same economic and demographic trends
@@diepie5144 The only countries in Africa that were ever considered "first-world" and developed to Western standards were Rhodesia and South Africa before 1994. Both were ruled by whites so it makes total sense. Point out a country in Africa that is stable, well-educated, industrialized, and not starving every week.
@@f-86zoomer37 did I ever say Africa was first-world? I said the point of this video was to make the case that Africa *could* become first world in 20 years if it followed the same path of economic development. I don't even think that will happen, China only industrialized as it did because the Chinese state was stable enough to ensure that western businesses would be able to set up factories without having to fear about them being taken by corrupt oligarchs etc. But even that's besides the point you're making, which is that Africa *can't* industrialize, which I find looks over the fact that the majority of sub-saharan Africa didn't even have legal codes before they were colonized. The region has been effectively speed-running the process of building a state and economy from scratch since Colonial powers left in the '50s. The reason the most successful areas of Africa post-colonization were majority-white was that those people were better educated and had brought with them modern industrial and agricultural practices that most Africans did not have access to.
@@diepie5144 level of education is irrelevant, it is how fast your worker can learn new concepts that matters. and china has the 6th highest iq in the world with the largest labor force in the world. that is an automatic slam dunk. every company would want to set up plants there. now that is changing in favor of vietnam because china is closing down to the outside world again under xi.
As a Nigerian, I think it unfair to compare Africa to China. Firstly, China is a mostly homogeneous society which cannot be said for Africa. Chinese society and their government have different and specific goals on what they want to achieve, and they do whatever it takes whether good or bad to achieve it. The Chinese communist party with all the allegations of oppression and expansion is able to keep the citizens quiet because they invest and improve the quality of life of their citizens.
I do see some African countries improving significantly in the next decade but not all African countries. We have starting to see countries like Guinea, Mali and most recently Sudan going back to military and authoritarian era because of corruption and the citizens not seeing the benefit of democracy.
I see some African countries become more Authoritarian while some become more democratic. Whatever part is chosen by any African country, I hope it pays well for the citizens and countries.
you can be the Napoleon or Hitler to unify Africa
I don’t like this grouping of autocratic or Democratic I think countries should experiment to find which governance system works for them to modernise and not stagnate.
Another big factor that you did not mention but is key in my opinion is the climate. While China is located in a rather mild climate zone, most of Africa struggles with yearly floods, constant heat and other weather extremes. Therefore, Africa can’t just concentrate on all the factors you mention in order to grow economically but will always have setbacks in its evolvement, which slows the economic process a lot. Since not every country faces the same problems, has different standards of living and has to grow on its own, it’s very unlikely that Africa as a whole will see any significant developments. Great video though, I liked it!
China's heartland has had a single written language and a handful of major spoken languages for thousands of years.
Africa has thousands of different languages. There are 75 languages that have over 1million speakers.
Talking about Africa as a unified entity is nonsense.
12:40 Obviously the easiest part of the cycle to effect is the dependents, since a nation could simply have every person who retires and no longer contributes to the labor pool executed.
Oh you meant the education part? Boy is that egg on my face!
I love how so many of the comments were clearly made by people who either just watched the first couple minutes or just read the title.
Can u elaborate more? I am interested to listen to your thoughts.
No because Africa is a continent and China is a country, you can’t compare the two.
Good luck to the future African pioneers, love and blessings from your brothers and sisters in the USA.
You should go back there and be a new African pioneer with them
@@grandtheftavocado wow new there was going to be a racist eventually who shot off their ignorant mouth
@@grandtheftavocado Keep seething ;).
@@VinceroAlpha You're also racist for hating white people. As a black American, you were born and taught to hate white people.
@@f-86zoomer37 😂 Stop trolling. You are obsess with African people.
Absolutely brilliant video, love the amount of research you must have put into it!
People say Africa should unite but how can we unite when we refuse to hold hands with our neighbors?😔
Unification is only beneficial if run by monarchies or non democratic regimes. Otherwise the nation shatters due to the huge disparities and conflicts of interests like you see in occident.
Those unification evangelists were actually incompetent white socialists who never achieved anything in occident, they only came in power after the wealth was already established.
@@SP95
So just socialists?
Love your work. Minor correction - the infant mortality rate in 2020 was ~46 per 1000 live births, not 46%
Isn't that the same thing though?
@@Mozankey Not quite; 46 out of 1000 is 4.6%
@@iagreewithyou7486 Oh my gawd. I'm appalled by how I didn't catch that LOL. Thanks man
This video makes some good points while leaving out some very important points.
The premise is a bit too simple, talking about Africa as a whole was also too simple,.. yet it made some fair points.
Africa is complex. North Africa and Sub Saharan Africa’s growth trajectories for example are affected by different trends and in some ways might as well be different continents.
Then there are political obstacles like the fact that many African countries are “artificial” states struggling with integration issues, before discussing how little integration exists within the continent itself.
Then there is the discussion about whether manufacturing is truly an option for high job growth in the 21st century with the 4th industrial revolution and increased automation on the horizon.
I am still glad someone took a stab at this, it’s one perspective and one factor (demographics) and that is a start.
Don't forget that climate change is expected to make much of the African continent unlivable this century. I don't see how this end well given current trajectory...
Gosh, How much do I have to repeat this to these illiterates in the comment sections. He literally mentioned that China is 1 country and Africa is 54 countries and pure data comparision is narrow and isn't going to cover everything in the discussion.This is a video focusing on data analyzation, and you people in the comment section are screaming because he didn't cover politic, because that's the only thing you brainlets can argue day after day on the internet without concrete proof and data, unlike statistic and demographic.
Happy Diwali to all ❣️🎉💥
Likewise from Pakistan
di- what now?
I see a lot of comments so far espousing how they think "Africa" is inherently doomed to fail. Just going on record here with my observations - though I doubt many will read all of this this. As an American that has worked Engineering projects in both Tanzania, Morocco, Rwanda and the DRC. There is no way a Continent the size, diversity, and scope of Africa can possibly be lumped as a singular entity. In some regions of Africa, like West Africa (Just pulling out of French economic colonialism), and the EAC - could be grouped together like the EU, so I agree with Wendover. Obviously the difference is a matter of where one of the 54 Counties is economically - and where and how in that Country they invest. And how each Nation has coped with previous colonization, and continued outside influence (Think: AFRICOM).
Factually speaking, and According to the World Bank, Tanzania is more politically stable than Mexico, and about equal to Georgia (The Country) . *Namibia is more politically stable than the U.S.*, Rwanda is more politically stable than Montenegro, and *Botswana is more politically stable than Ireland.* More importantly, the economic growth rate in these Countries over the past decade dwarfs every Western nation (which to be fair is easier when coming from near nothing). 16 of the top 30 fastest growing economies in the past decade are in Africa. None are in the West. If 4 Caribbean islands are excluded, not one North American country is even in the top 75 in terms of economic growth rate.
A certain group of Americans will always see what they want to see in terms of Africa, and the African Diaspora. However, from my experience with boots on the ground there, One would likely want to target investments in the future, and not the past. Many African governments are now understanding that raw materials are not a source of wealth, but only a source of perpetual poverty if there is no locally manufactured/produced value add to export and trade (think: where your cocoa will soon be _processed_ now)
Also important to point out is the Westernized worldview of _Economic gains,_ materialism, and individual consumption as a barometer of a nations success probably won't apply to the Ubuntu culture of many parts of African society. Rwanda is an example of how a Country can quickly recover from a colonizer-contrived divide-and-rule environment. This I submit may be the best quality of many African societies. Unlike the U.S. and some other Countries, they can recover from being taught to hate one another, for the benefit of the social good.
My 2 cents.
Fantastic video as usual Wendover - one big part missing though I would say. Climate change impacts in the coming years are poised to hit the Global South and particularly many African nations very hard. Regardless of mitigation costs, adaptation costs alone will be enormous. Whether there is a development solution for that remains to be seen.
Yup. Life close to the equator will become increasingly unbearable as the earth continues to warm.
When African Politics finally decides to exercise some will and drive an actual as well as a cultural change over Education (Stop dropping failure rates of students through lowering grading standards and kick the Teachers' Unions' asses over its corruption and protection of inept teachers), the Population bubble moving up to reduce the dependency ratio will do no good for the prosperity of the Continent.
We have Teachers' Unions showing a blind eye to teaching posts being sold in township schools, and teachers in rural areas are rarely competent to teach (we wanted to introduce mandatory CPD for teachers in SA, the unions forced a strike instead)
You are screwed. Emigrate.
CPD?
@@MrNicoJac Continuous professional development, i.e. bi-annual tests to see if you still know your shizz
@@xpusostomos I did, can't deal anymore
@@h3llb3nd4
Thanks!
I kept feeling like there was going to be a skillshare sponsor spot.
I was torn between Curiosity Stream and Brilliant
Great video! Again 👌
Wasn't this video uploaded before or I'm getting crazy?
The entire continent of Africa has WAY too much growth to do before it'll grow. China has one government Africa has +50 governments. I do not see the continent being a real factor in the world's economy.
Asia has 50 governments, and they're doing ok
this is a dumb argument. Number of governments doesn't matter its what the governments are doing that does.
Certain countries there are very well poised. The great minority however...
@@dargondude2375 not what the governments are doing, it's what the people are doing that matters
@@xpusostomos nah, its mainly the government. They implement policies on education, infrastructure, transportation and industry. These things are important for a developing country. What the people can do is influenced by the environment that the government creates you know like giving them the education to engage in productive jobs.
Would love for you to do a similar comparison between India and China. Similar to Africa, India is roughly 15-20 years behind China in economic indicators but I am not so sure about the other Social indicators.
But unlike Africa, India is relatively stable single cohesive country.
Maybe " is Africa the next China " is a bit over blown, but rather, China want to make Africa the next China starting from one country at the a time. For example, we see the result in Ethiopia, Kenya, and keep moving on the next country one at a time.
I think you shouldve narrowed down to specific countries since any meaningful and impactful data are only coming from a handful of African States like Ethiopia , Egypt,Morocco, south Africa and Kenya.
South Africa won't become any powerhouse. It's a far cry from what it used to be. Ethiopia is in a civil war. Same with Morocco. War war war is just the nature of the African man.
@@f-86zoomer37 liar
@@jaybee4577 cope
Too late for both Africa and India
We are in the midst of the 4th industrial revolution, where automation will replace human labor in low value added manufacturing, which means it is impossible for Africa or India or rest of the developing world to copy China/ East Asia's growth model of starting from low value added manufacturing, then moving up the economic value chain.
Which means China is likely the last major economy to fully industrialize through human labor.
No, industries like garment production, electronics assembly, furniture manufacturing, toy manufacturing, etc. are now huge in Vietnam, Bangladesh, Ethiopia
This is by far my favorite educstional channel, keep up the good work!
Very interesting, thank you.
I think it was a little confusing to switch between "10 years ago" and "in the 70s", etc.
Maybe you could take 2021 China as a reference and just always say "x years behind". That might be more intuitively comparable :)
comparing a continent to a country is already a skewed comparison.
@@zombieat
Depends on the size of them respectively. But yes, the video acknowledges that explicitly and that's basically the conclusion. Have you watched the video in its entirety?
Feel like wendover took AP human geography in high school and decided it was his fav subject
Wendover definitely gives off AP student energy.
You didn’t seem to mention the one defining factor for Africa’s lack in economic growth: Corruption and ethnic hatred
Currently, i do not believe that africa can. Corruption is rising and there are way too many problems happening like civil wars, wars, rebellions, corruption and almost no cooperation between african countries.
In the future, yes, it has the potential, but i do not believe that it will happen in the near future. Especially considering what happens in south africa, nigeria, ethiopia, ertigrea and so on. I do not believe that it will be a second china. It will take much time.
Wdym ethiopia is finally back on track and removing the last obstacle to get rid of ethnic federalism once and for all plus its opening up its almost isolated economy to foreign companies and investors they are on the right track if u ask me
@@AMR_k400 Not really. They are near an energy war with egypt and there seems to be no progress in trying to find a compromise.