{"id":1547,"date":"2016-05-04T11:53:39","date_gmt":"2016-05-04T10:53:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/?p=1547"},"modified":"2016-10-26T15:52:12","modified_gmt":"2016-10-26T14:52:12","slug":"agenda-2063-iv-a-commodities-strategy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/2016\/05\/04\/agenda-2063-iv-a-commodities-strategy\/","title":{"rendered":"Agenda 2063 (IV): A Commodities Strategy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week I was in Sao Paulo with a group of IESE\u2019s Global Executive\u00a0MBA program participants. The module focused on Doing Business in Latin America<\/b>. Three of the local speakers showed the same series of The Economist<\/i>\u2019s front pages! The series went from \u201cBrazil takes off\u201d (2009) to \u201cThe betrayal of Brazil\u201d (2016).<\/p>\n

\"Local
Local processing of raw materials will keep value added local<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This reminded me of a similar series on Africa: from \u201cThe hopeless continent\u201d (2000) to \u201cAfrica rising\u201d (2011) \u2013 a perspective that now is questioned. The fact is despite the continent\u2019s recent strong economic growth, Africa is still commodity dependent<\/b>. A commodities strategy is needed<\/b>\u00a0for\u00a0Africa to really rise.<\/p>\n

This is one of the flagship projects of the African Union\u2019s Agenda 2063<\/a><\/b>.The United Nation\u2019s Economic Commission for Africa released recently its Economic Report for Africa 2016<\/a>. The report highlights the still heavy reliance on the production and export of raw commodities<\/b>. While many countries are making an effort to diversify their economies, the fact is that the share of manufacturing has remained stagnant at 11 % of the continent\u2019s GDP over the last decade<\/b>.<\/p>\n

The good news is that Africa is resource-rich<\/b>. What\u2019s needed is that the value added by processing and marketing these resources is kept locally<\/b>.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the aim of an Africa\u2019s commodity strategy:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cEnabling African countries add value, extract higher rents from their commodities, integrate into the Global Value chains, and promote vertical and horizontal diversification anchored in value addition and local content development\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In other words, Africa\u2019s commodity strategy should be closely linked to its industrialization strategy<\/b>. While the continent lags behind the rest of the world, there\u2019s a positive side to this situation: \u00a0Africa has the possibility to leapfrog to a greener industrial era<\/b>. Doing so takes not only investments but also \u2013 and most important \u2013 the will of both policy makers and business leaders.<\/p>\n

Related posts:
\n\u2022 Together raw materials and technology can transform African business<\/a>
\n\u2022 Cooperating with suppliers<\/a>
\n\u2022 Oil: Blessing or curse?<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week I was in Sao Paulo with a group of IESE\u2019s Global Executive\u00a0MBA program participants. The module focused on Doing Business in Latin America. Three of the local speakers showed the same series of The Economist\u2019s front pages! The series went from \u201cBrazil takes off\u201d (2009) to \u201cThe betrayal of Brazil\u201d (2016). This reminded […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1654,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,99314],"tags":[93564,346,45494,121,100258,82429,1420],"class_list":["post-1547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-social-and-institutional-context","tag-agenda-63","tag-brazil","tag-commodities","tag-economic-growth","tag-leapfrog","tag-sao-paulo","tag-united-nations","megacategoria-mc-africa"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1654"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1547"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1633,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1547\/revisions\/1633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}