Should sub-Saharan Africa accept to sacrifice its industrialization, its 30 glorious years and its youth in the name of the climate?

Sub-Saharan Africa could, like developed countries that benefited from the 30 glorious years, experience a long and strong period of growth in its turn. But while the conditions are right, authoritarian thinking about global warming could deprive it of this.

When climate dogma prevents the industrialization of sub-Saharan Africa???

The SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) were defined by the UN in 2015. Their influence on investment policies is decisive. Indeed, industries, which are generally generators of CO? emissions, are most often dismissed in the name of climate. Concretely, this blocks industrialization, will prevent the creation of tens of millions of jobs and the development of sub-Saharan Africa but also, given the demographics, pushes the region a little faster towards an unprecedented humanitarian chaos. Yet, if we consider that the countries of the region together emit less than 2% of the world's CO?, then it appears that the climate injunctions of NGOs and institutions have little legitimacy. Africa deserves better than subordination to the SDGs and must have a realistic project that takes into account the needs of its populations and its economic specificities.??

Climate virtue for Africa and fossil fuel power plants at will for the others ?

At a time when China, India, the United States and Europe continue to open hundreds of coal and gas power plants, can we believe that Africa will industrialize with a few hydraulic dams, solar panels and wind turbines that are stamped as sustainable but which are also highly lethal for African birdlife? The continent, which currently has no nuclear energy, with the exception of South Africa, will only be able to industrialize by also using fossil fuels, like other regions of the world. Given the probability of a humanitarian crisis that could kill hundreds of millions of Africans if the continent does not develop, it is essential to find a compromise.?

In the absence of development and eradication of hunger, the lures of sustainability and digital technology

The discourse of well-fed Westerners or Africans, often climate activists or representatives of international institutions, sometimes African, who docently explain to a sub-Saharan population that includes 350 million people suffering from malnutrition and with little access to energy, that the energy transition, sustainable consumption and digital transformation are priorities in the name of the climate, seems indecent and out of touch with African realities.

The assumption that ICTs will be enough to propel Africa towards prosperity is fallacious. In order to structure its economy, as all developed countries have done before, the region cannot avoid going through the primary and secondary cycles (agriculture and industry). The digitization of public services is certainly essential. However, it is not certain that the populations want a digital and service society, tertiary or quaternary, which would only benefit a few, including sustainable and ICT actors, startups or companies that robotize the few production jobs but capture most of the funding and subsidies in the middle of an ocean of misery and chaos. Africa especially needs manufacturing, agriculture and jobs.??????

It is necessary to respect the environment as much as possible but produce enough to finance progress?

Construction of infrastructure, housing, household equipment and creation of public services, employment and reduction of the informal economy that sclerotizes development, the fight against hunger and extreme poverty, there are countless projects and challenges to which sub-Saharan Africa must respond. Above all, it is necessary to respect the environment as much as possible, including the fauna and flora, but no one thinks of making Africa the new factory of the world. However, it is necessary that it produces at least a large share of its consumer goods and exports added value to offer more growth, finance its progress and meet the needs of its people.

The impasse of an endogenous development of Sub-Saharan Africa

Everyone wants to benefit from progress, and most of the poorest people do not want to live in destitution while the rest of the world evolves. But building an industry capable of supplying modern consumer goods to a population that will reach several billion inhabitants in a few decades, spread over nearly fifty countries, would require thousands of billions of euros that would be impossible to find and tens of years of research carried out by hundreds of thousands of engineers and the filing or purchase of millions of patents. When this is done, the prices of the products, taking into account the investments and debts, would not always be competitive.?

Thus, the choice of a form of isolation in the age of globalization seems more demagogic than efficient. African institutions could take note of the failure of mainly endogenous projects such as the Lagos Action Plan (LAP) and Agenda 2063, about which IndustriALL Global Union, which groups 50 million workers, states: "Countless strategies for the industrialization of Africa have been adopted, from the African Union's Agenda 2063, from the continental level to national industrial policies, but the take-off is not happening. Only pragmatism will get the economy off the ground. China has been able to industrialize in 3 decades because it has opened up to globalization and the West, including France, has provided it with technologies and know-how.?

After the failure of the post-colonial development assistance (ODA) model, a more pragmatic approach

The method of the program for the industrialization of sub-Saharan Africa in less than 20 years is operational. In order to save hundreds of billions of euros and decades of research, we want to go and convince, with production process diagrams and financial projections, large Western companies currently producing in China, to include Sub-Saharan Africa in their global value chain (GVC) stages. In this way, local companies will benefit from technology transfers and develop ecosystems. Our 360° vision will allow us to simultaneously engage all necessary actions. Search for investors and constitution of financial funds, organization of infrastructures and industrial complexes, training, but above all communication that will generate a global dynamic. The prospects of an immense market in the making will complete the process of persuading potential partners who are also eager to reduce their dependence on China.?

Of course, the international organizations and partners of Africa, including France, the EU and the USA, bogged down in their climate dogma but influential financial backers, will not always be immediately seduced, but they can only resolve to finally accept an industrial policy that the populations approve of, so as not to be excluded, to the benefit of other countries, from the African stake in the world geopolitical and geostrategic chessboard. African institutions must also understand that youth do not want to be sacrificed on the altar of climate.

Sub-Saharan Africa is at a crossroads. If African institutions persist in following the same policy dictated by a rather Western climate dogma, the region will concentrate 90% of the world's extreme poverty in 2030 (source: World Bank). With 2 billion inhabitants in 2050 and 4 in 2100, the greatest humanitarian catastrophe will be inevitable. But as proposed, another way is possible. Institutions like the AU and the AfDB have the fate of Africa in their hands.

Francis Journot est consultant et entrepreneur. Il dirige le programme pour l’industrialisation de l’Afrique subsaharienne ou Plan de régionalisation de production Europe Afrique et Africa Atlantic Axis.?Il fait de la recherche dans le cadre d’International Convention for a Global Minimum Wage et tient le site Collectivité Nationale?