Why No Place's Industrialization Looks Like Any Other Place

Corporate conquests, raw materials, industrialization and economic development... I'm beginning to think that African classrooms should be receiving USA 1970s high school history textbooks.

Histories differ, context differs, trade relationships differ, languages differ, currency differs.  The development of Western Guangdong Province looks nothing like the development of coastal Shenzhen. The WSJ reported last week that Viet Nam would not instantly replace China as an outsource.  In Harvard Business Review this month, author Ndubuisi Ekekwe of the African Institution of Technology and Fasmicro Group published an essay with the headline "Why Africa's Industrialization Won't Look Like China's".

It's not a bad short essay, but it could have been even shorter. If the western edge of one Chinese Province looks nothing like the eastern edge, why on earth would we expect a whole continent to develop by the pattern of eastern Shenzhen?

Driverless Used Car and Electronics Imports to Africa

Follow up to the new "Driverless" UNU 2018 Person In Port Report


The headline, “Thousands of tons of e-waste shipped illegally to Nigeria inside used vehicles” was familiar. In my last blog, I gave readers "the fine print".

Almost everything documented by the 2018 UNU's "Person in the Port Project" (2018) report on used electronics imports to Nigeria corresponds with our 4 years of research in Ghana. Bottom line, the importers are presumed innocent. Most purchases are normal and good. The headline focuses on a statistic that 15,000 tons of 60,000 tons “didn’t work”. Put another way, 75% of the imported used electronics are fully functional. More importantly, the report tells us that of the 25% of electronics needing repair, Nigeria's Tech Sector is the best on earth at fixing them. 

"The high skill level of Nigeria’s refurbishing sector, with the ability to fix many technical defects in UEEE at reasonable service cost, also motivates importers to import both functioning and non-functioning electronic equipment to Nigeria." 

- 5.8.1 PIP Report 2018

The 2018 report avoids the “poverty porn” - pics of kids posed on old TVs, etc. - that marred its 2015 report. In almost every respect, the report shows a fairer image of Africa’s Tech Sector. And the most important concession Europe has now made is to concede the 2015 Report's KEY FINDING - motives of "drivers" to export "waste" - has been disproven. Joseph "Hurricane" Benson had no "driver" to put waste into his export containers. The only financial motive that can explain these shipments are intent to reuse and repair.

So the "driverless" waste export theory is busted. Let’s focus first on Ten Things the report gets right.

Reckless Warhorse Dishes: The "Africans Must be Taught to Repair"

war·horse  ˈwôrˌhôrs (noun) (in historical contexts) a large, powerful horse ridden in battle.

1. • informala soldier, politician, or sports player who has fought many campaigns or contests.
   • informala musical, theatrical, or literary work that has been heard or performed repeatedly.

     "that old warhorse Liszt's “Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2.”"

I've got a messy blog here (apology for posting before editing, this is take 2).  I should write it up as a real article, though.  It parallels conversations I've had over beers with many colleagues in the ICT world over the decades.  And maybe it explains why I left multi-million dollar UN and WTO and IMF funded "AID Projects" and enjoy private investment outside the #charitableindustrialcomplex.  And the reason I should write it up more professionally is that it appears "WASTE AID" and "RECYCLING DEVELOPMENT AID" is about to go down the same learning curve, without a helmet as they rush to be first to submit projects for funding.

Inexperience, Bad People Management, Lack of Accounting Skills, Spotty Customer Service, Sub Par (food) Quality.  Let's compare the "5 frequent reasons" that restaurants in the USA and EU fail with the explanations offered by the Aid for Africa complex.  Does a 60% failure rate prove Africa's incapable? Or does Africa's enormous and steady growth demonstrate an unhealthy attraction of Western Aid workers to projects lacking business fundamentals?

"Reckless" Korean War warhorse honored by medal and statue @ National Museum of the Marine Corps, Quantico, Virginia

The myth is that "nothing is getting better".  I call this the "restaurant crisis".

The logic of AID and Enforcement in Africa seems built on "failure needs more help".  If 60% of new USA restaurants fail in the first year, and 80% fail in 5 years, then Governments should fund professional Restaurant Aid Workers to save Restaurateurs.  Charity needs to save the failing restaurants.  Compare that to the free market, which invests based on past success.

And beeeliiiiiieeevvee me, I could get you some restaurant worker photos that would send you skeedaddling from emerging market restaurants to burn wires in Agbogbloshie in a heartbeat (and genuine "child labor" to boot).   Maybe even some with FIRE pictures for the photojournalists.

If you have seen Awal M. Basit (2nd left) burn wire, you know this amount of gasoline flame is "shiny object for reporter"

Lessons from ICT Battlefield (Information Communications Technology) 

I ran across an ICT blog yesterday which brought me back to that battlefield. The tone is a bit "warhorsey", and I can relate to that. I started out, after Mass DEP, in the ICT realm.  The idea (like World Computer Exchange) was to take surplus computers and use them to develop school tech rooms and internet cafes in Africa.  Millions of WTO and UNGAID dollars were going to these countries to "connect them to the web", and thousands of western Aid Workers, volunteers, etc., were carpetbagging to Africa to play a positive role, and earn a living, saving Africa from darkness.  (Fair Trade Recycling's 2016 EWaste Trading program is derivative).

Forget the Word E-Waste: World Bank's "Critical Mass of Users"

Here is a link to just one very interesting World Bank metadata paper...

Ghana Country Study: A roadmap for the strategic application of information and communication technology (2011)  

Report prepared for the World Bank by 'Balancing Act'.

It explains something I observed in Cairo.   Before an internet utility wants to invest in providing internet, it requires a "Critical Mass of Users".   You can't build cell phone towers if no one has a phone.   Unless you have the Tennessee Valley Authority (USA project to provide electricity in areas people lacked critical mass) or Marshall Plan, you depend on the "Good Enough Market".   The "GEM" is the definition for basically affordable goods that function well enough.   A 17" CRT monitor sold in Cairo for $21 will be available to 1,000 times more people than a $400 new flat monitor.  It is the 1,000 people who own the $21 CRT monitor which make it possible for private enterprise to run internet cable or sell satellite dishes.  It takes 1,000 people with the $20 used cell phone to make it possible to provide enough cell phone towers that people can talk to each other.

Agbogbloshie (the red dot below) is a tiny neighborhood in a very big city (Accra) which has hospitals and highways and factories and universities and TV towers and radio stations and nearly universal access to cell phones.  The World Bank is concerned with the entirety of the economy below.   And there are scads of newly published Metadata now public at World Bank.   You don't need to narrow your view to Mike Anane, Greenpeace, Jim Puckett, Kyle Wiens and SkyNews images of burning wires.  There is a massive, massive city here, and as Hans Rosling showed us, the news is mostly good.

I'm advising everyone to get outside of the word "e-waste", the very word has a fetish attached to it which I believe has created fear and group-think.  Look at the photos of the Green Advocacy report below.   While the reports show 85-91% reuse of imports to Ghana and Nigeria, better than new product, the report is decorated with photos of "poverty" and "pollution".  It is a mindset around the words "e-waste", even people telling good news feel obligated to take pictures of poverty to prove they were in the same place as the other e-waste reporters.

Cultural Gulfs In Developing Markets #1: BlueGrass, Soukous, & 9 Mile

The Urban v. Rural path of development is a common theme in this blog.   "Emerging markets" in Brazil, China, South Africa, India, Egypt and Indonesia have their own "story of stuff".    For 3B3K (three billion people earning $3000 dollars per year) internet = entertainment.   It's a whole mass media market creating a demand for "good enough" devices.  These markets now produce/consume more "stuff" than rich nations do, but they also reuse and repair devices, like rich nations did 25 years ago.

Afrikan Marilyn Manson Die Antwoods Volandi Visser

Huge factories devoted to refurbishment of good enough display devices served these markets for the past 20 years.  They deserved more credit than they got in the "E-Waste Toxic Dump" press.  Unfortunately, I'm the only person writing about it, and I've been labelled.  This "well is poisoned".

But what about the demand, the noise, the hunger for music and videos coming from inside those cities?
How are the new hyper-cities like Hong Kong-Shenzhen-Guangzhou (a metropolis with a population as large a Japan) incorporating music and culture from the rural areas migrants came from, and how are those sounds changing when infused with world pop?  When we call six billion people "the third world", we put megacities into the same category as Somalian refugee camps.

We talking about a very cosmopolitan three billion people, my friends.

The Economist: Follow the Fixers

From this week's The Economist:  Follow the Fixers

Who to partner with in Africa, if you are trying your hand at business development?

"AS GLOBAL investors salivate over Africa's economic growth, Ashish Thakkar, founder of the Mara Group, explains why success still hinges on local knowledge"

I repost this because it's very close to my takeaway, when I left Africa, thinking "I shall return".   The people who fix things, who tinker, who repair.  They tend not to be liars.  It's not the way a Fixer's brain is wired.

This interview by the Economist with African development expert Ashish Thakkar says much the same thing.

"What do you think is the single most important thing..." to help Africa?

Answer:  People who make improvements.   Follow people who fix things.

Term Paper V (5): "E-waste" Export, Geog of Env Justice

Back to the "Term Paper" (for those following).   Here is how I overlay the "regulated areas" of "environmental justice" and "property value" on an actual case of "non-OECD".

(You may need to go back to "Term Paper 1-IV").  This is an academic post, which goes well with a video, but we also want these accessible in nations which csor videos, so here's a link to a "geographic" song, Rue St. Vincent, sung by Yves Montand.  Open and listen in another window...



Case Study:   Singapore and the Malay Peninsula

Malaysia, the nation, also includes huge rain forests in Borneo and Papua New Guinea - home to both the most biologically diverse and unstudied rain forests on the planet, disappearing orangutans, and the OK Tedi Copper and Gold mine (#evil).  Where it is green, Malaysia is very green.  But it's easier for the purpose of the case study to look just at the Malay peninsula, which Malaysia shares with the city-state of Singapore (at independence from the British empire, they were both part of Malaysia, but Singapore won independence fairly peacefully).

First, the "eyeballs diagrams" are NOT drawn to scale.  Singapore is 704 square kilometers, Malaysia has 338,550 square kilometers.  After a couple of years of co-governance, Singapore became independent in 1965;  it still had not rebuilt from Japanese occupation during WW2.  From Wikepedia 13.01.08:

Facing severe unemployment and a housing crisis, Singapore embarked on a modernisation programme that focused on establishing a manufacturing industry, developing large public housing estates and investing heavily on public education. Since independence, Singapore's economy has grown by an average of nine percent each year. By the 1990s, the country had become one of the world's most prosperous nations, with a highly developed free market economy, stronginternational trading links, and the highest per capita gross domestic product in Asia outside of Japan.^[1]

Peninsular Malaysia has 131,598 square kilometers, so even eliminating the islands Borneo and PNG, it dwarfs Singapore.

"E'Waste" Repair: They Took the Road Most Travelled

Agriculture in developing worlds can mean starvation.   There are a lot of things better than starvation.  Perhaps they shouldn't have to make that choice.  But they do.

Roll up the window, you're letting the air out

• Bush meat, hunting of endangered species.

• Gold mining and gold panning, using mercury from USA's recycled lamps

• Cutting rain forests.

• Soldier.

• Sex worker.

• Kidnapper, pirate, and thief.

There are many paths once the starving leave the rural fields and move to the slums.

There are not as many ways out. (World Bank: Informality & Productivity in the Labor Market in Peru)

Scrapping and repairing are not on the lists of Ju-ju professions.  The strong concentration of scrappers in China and Africa is not a sign of exploitation.  These are good people who are trying to thread a needle, who are trying to create wealth in the most honorable way they can.   Scrap and repair is the road most travelled for the smartest kids in the slums.

Jorge is still fixing TVs.   Choma was not replaced.  See them in action in the 2008 video below

They cannot all be taxi drivers, cooks, and teachers.  There has to be a way to add value.  Entire economies are supported on the multipliers from scrap and reuse.  The money they bring in makes another career, like teaching or taxi driving, or pie baking possible.

ODM - Opportunity is in the Wind

First, here is a May 2010 film from Financial Times, which was done during the wave of 10 suicides at Foxconn (Han Hoi) in Shenzhen (click "MORE")

Time Out: Big Picture Environmentalism

I'm on my way to vacation, followed by a trip to our fair trade recycling plant in Sonora, Mexico, then a presentation at the CES in Las Vegas.    I'll probably write more than ever on the road.  But even my haiku is too long.

If there were an Abstract for prospective readers of this blog, it might be:

The author [Robin Ingenthron] is a former environmental regulator with a degree in international relations, and experience in "third world" and "second world" development programs.  Using MBA skills and a business as a background, he writes about how environmentalism can make more efficient choices, trimming policies which do not benefit the earth ecology, with particular emphasis on environmental protocals which have been "hijacked" or influenced by greed.