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by wrong_variable 2542 days ago
> There's massive cultural, ethnic, and economic diversity. The continent spans countries which are middle income to the lowest in the world. Unity and cohesiveness are difficult regionally, less across the entire continent.

You could replace Africa with India / EU / China / US the same properties exist.

Who created the borders of African countries ?

Most African if asked the question.

"Are you African ?" would answer yes.

So please give African some credit ?

> Manufacturing, traditionally the ladder that countries climb to prosperity is being automated at an unprecedented rate.

Hold your smartphone right there. Most of this narrative is driven by media in the West to placate their population, so that they dont form labour union.

Travel anywhere in the world with the labour part of the supply chain. Most manufacturing still requires 100s of million of workers. You just cant see it in the West due to ships bringing it to them.

Humans are cheap - much more than robots. You can keep humans alive in the developing world for 100 dollars / months (its not starving wage for them ). For 100 dollars / month you are getting the most advanced robot any company can build.

Total factor productivity has been declining for a while, regardless of how much automation you bring to the table you cannot solve for human entropy ( death catches up with everyone eventually, even the most advanced human roboticist dies eventually or has to retire ).

1 comments

Nope - just last week the president of South Africa was talking at a conference in Johannesburg dedicated to "Industry 4.0".

A massive existing concern is job-losses due to automation. In Africa, right now.

You need to be more specific about "automation".

My kids still need a lot of manual human labor to be educated ( services ).

You still need a lot of manual labor to create roads, bridges and apartments.

People were talking about flying cars 50 years ago, all those flying car investors must be billionares ?

On the ground things haven't progressed much, regardless of how much you would like to believe it.

Cape Town literally ran out of water !

If you mean automation for producing cheap plastic toys for Westerns ? If I was African why should I care about being exploited for white skinned consumers ?

China pulled a fast one, with selling cheap plastic goods to move up the value chain, steal technology and create Huawei.

African countries should do the same. If the US/EU imposes tariffs due to to currency devaluation. Africans should band together and only sell their natural resources in a new currency. Lets see how long the EU/US lasts when the most resource rich continent pulls a King Faisal.

>You need to be more specific about "automation". All of it, no exceptions. Happy?