The United States is the world's largest oil producer, far ahead of the Saudis, Russians, etc. Yet you will never see an American beating his chest to claim and rejoice in this world number one spot.
The Chinese have more rare earths, essential in high and nanotechnology, more than the whole world put together. But never a Chinese will take advantage and pour out a long time on that.
The French have lithium to exploit over more than a century, but that does not mean that a Frenchman talks about it as if his life depended on it.
Kazakhstan produces nearly half of the uranium consumed in the world, however the Khazastanais do not boast about it otherwise.
If Americans, Chinese, French, Khazastanians talk more or less about the raw materials available to their countries, it's not because they don't know or are secretive on the subject, it's just because that's not it which is essential and which is important.
What is important, on the other hand, is what we do with this raw material, the transformation that we make of it, what man and his intelligence add to it to sublimate his environment and facilitate his existence.
An illustration to support my point:
At the sight of a magnificent cake, one does not think of the producer of the wheat which is its main raw material, nor of the miller who put it into flour. One thinks of the pastry chef who made the recipe for the cake, from which he also largely benefits from its sale price, while it is subsidies from this sale price that go to the wheat producer and the miller respectively.
As long as the African does not understand that it is more advantageous to be the pastry cook rather than the wheat farmer or the miller in a cake story, he will always feel wronged and cheated.
The Industrial Revolution since the 19th century consecrated the processes of industrial transformation and technological progress.
The Portuguese were the kings of the seas and oceans until the 18th century when they discovered the Americas and the Indies. The advent of the steam engine, which they did not know how to invent or adapt to their sailing boats, unlike the English, upset their dominant position, which they are now trailing behind in the West.
The Chinese may have been in front of everyone for the first 10 centuries, inventing gunpowder and paper, as soon as they missed the train of mathematical and arithmetic sciences, they got dropped even if today they understood and make up for it as best they can, like a monkey, they are still behind with a...technological gesture.
All this to make us understand in Africa that raw materials certainly have an importance, even a strategic importance for some, but they do not carry the decision in the world competition. It is the school, men better educated in science and technology who are the future of the continent and not what nature has graciously placed at our disposal.
By Constant Sinzogan
