https://arab.news/9nukj
A seductive idea has taken hold in boardrooms, climate summits, and venture capital decks: Africa will vault over the messy stages of development that defined Europe and East Asia. No smokestacks. No sprawling factory towns. No fossil fuels. Just a clean jump into digital services, renewable energy and critical minerals, with smartphones where assembly lines once stood. The story flatters modern sensibilities. It also flatters outside investors who prefer tidy narratives to stubborn facts.
Africa does hold assets the world urgently needs. Lithium, cobalt, manganese, graphite, copper, and rare earths sit beneath its soil. Solar radiation and wind reach levels Europe can only envy. Cities such as Nairobi, Lagos, Kigali, and Accra host young coders, logistics startups, and fintech firms that would look at home in Berlin or Bangalore. Services exports already make up about a quarter of the continent’s total exports, and they have grown far faster than goods trade since the mid-2000s.
Productivity in tourism, business services, agro-processing, and ICT often exceeds that of traditional farming several times over, with job growth that in some countries rivals or even exceeds manufacturing. Manufacturing itself, by contrast, has hovered around 11 percent of the gross domestic product for more than a decade, less than half the share seen in East Asia during its takeoff.
