Page 23 - Msingi Afrika Magazine Issue 16

Economy

new confidence that will potentially
be rewarded with lucrative gains,
especially at a time when value-laden
sectors such as power are opening
up in unprecedented ways.

Business, in Nigeria, will also boom
for hotel owners, travel agents,
airlines, and events planners as the
number of Nigeria-focused trips
and investment conferences swell.
Scammers might even be expected
to cash in as well.

The one class of people who have
nothing to gain will be ordinary
Nigerians: the market woman in
Ibadan, the itinerant shoe cleaner economy, closely linked to the cap- Africa is an underdeveloped society,
in Lagos, the motorcycle taxi rider italist system of international trade, with strong features and processes
in Makurdi, the cattle merchant in international banking, international of a colonial society still visible and
Potiskum, the shoe maker in Aba, stock-markets, and international active. The biggest development
the newspaper vendor in Abuja; etc., science. The 2nd economy is the problem of an underdeveloped so-
all condemned by their country to non-industrial sector, populated ciety is the pathological relationship
extreme poverty. largely by Africans, with hardly any existing between the city and the

links to capitalist international trade, countryside. During the colonial era,
Clearly, we are talking here about the international banking, international South Africa had the largest concen-
two (2) economies of the two Afri- stock-markets, and international tration of settler-Europeans, who
can countries. The United Nations science (Vilakazi, 2011). The same were an embodiment of capitalist
Statistical Commission was deal- applies to the Nigerian economic industrialization in Africa. These
ing with the ‘First (1st) Economy’ structure. The same applies to a settler-Europeans were the exten-
of Nigeria, not the ‘Second (2nd) number of countries in Africa. sion of Western industrialization
Economy’. and modernization in the country.
If you study modern economic They became the face of South Af-
This is the challenge facing the history, you will notice that at every rica in the world. However, this very
African continent – of integrat- major, historic turning point in the thin layer of industrialization and
ing the 2nd economy into the 1st economic history of any nation, modernization was resting, and still
economy, and then redevelop a there has been one sector of the rests, on the economic, educational,
really African-oriented and root- economy which has provided the technical, and social depression of
ed African economy, where every greatest forward thrust to the entire the overwhelming majority of the
body, black and white, brown and economy of the country. Look population, Africans – hence the
green, rural-based population at the role of cotton, slavery, and underdevelopment of the African
and urban-based population will the textile industry in laying the population.
be integrated into one common foundation for the rise of capitalist
mainstream economy on an equal civilization; look at the construction Rural development, the upgrading
footing. of Railroads in late 19th century US and development of African sub-
economy; look at the role of Hous- sistence agriculture, in our country,
South Africa, according to Thabo ing in the US economy today; look can play the same decisive role in
Mbeki (our former State President), at mining in the economic history turning our economy around.
has two economies: the “1st econ- of South Africa, etc., etc.
omy” and the “2nd economy”. In What we need to do is to empower
actual fact, the 1st economy is the It is wrong to assume that South the masses of African people to
white-controlled, industrialized, Africa is a developing society. South meet their immediate material needs,
modernized sector of the colonial

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