African Resources: Richest in Quantity, But Poorest in Quality

Indeed, Africa is greatly rich in natural as well as human resources, which are basis for the prosperity of a given country. However, the continent is globally the poorest and underdeveloped.

Natural calamities play a pivotal role in downgrading Africa’s productivity. Natural disasters in the continent are devastating termites that suck a lot of money out of the continent. They are greatly characterised through epidemics, endemics, droughts, floods, agricultural pests and cyclones. According to the WHO stats in 2004, Morocco experienced an earthquake that damaged her economy and saw Africa spending 400 000 US dollars to resuscitate the dying country. The earthquake further led to the death of 148 people while others where left injured. The eastern region of Africa is under the greatest danger of natural catastrophes. In 2008, climatological disasters such as disasters claimed many victims with more than one third of the population affected in Djibouti, Eritrea and Somalia. These natural calamities among others are responsible for under development and have used money attained from mining to rebuild collapsed economic sectors.

The lack of advanced technology to process African resources is a major setback on African development that makes the continent inferior in quality and value. The lack of efficient impact breakers such as boulders has reduced productivity in recycling slags, moulds, steel scrap and the breaking of pig iron in Steel industries like ZISCO in Zimbabwe has largely lead to the exportation of unfinished goods for processing. This generates few money insufficient to develop and revamp other industries namely construction, clothing and motoring sectors that ceased to function in 2016. This has reduced the availability of employment and has destabilised the economy. Such calamities have contributed to low rates of productivity because Africa produces what she does not consume while consuming what she does not produce.

Conflict over natural resources is creating a low level of industrialisation and the standard of living in Africa. In countries such as Sudan, civil wars emerged over the control of oil mines. In February 2019, the United Nations Human Rights Council released a report reflecting how Sudan’s rich oil industry is fuelling wars in the Country. It said that the state-owned Nilepet oil company has diverted oil revenues, which are supposed to be shared with states into the coffers of elites in the government. This has led to selfish retain of governmental income earned from the oil mines and has made a leak in building a strong economy of the country. The same issue has happened in Places like the DRC where non-governmental sectors have resort to violence after the government in Lubumbashi and Mbuju-Mayi excluded them from the accumulation of minerals like diamonds and gold. 

To conclude, these conflicts and issues in resources have worsened the rate of development in Africa. In short, Africa is cursed by its natural resources as they are leading to violence and conflicts in the continent.