The ability to self regulate and control the economic destiny and to provide economic security in one's country is true independence and nationhood. Without the emergence of industry and the national self regulation to protect the resources of one's nation, the fate of the country will be in the hands of the foreign industrialists, who will decide what products are available for purchased in the markets and who will from outside your country, determine what is of value in the minds of the people through constant advertisements and the ubitquious presence of their products. For example, if you have automobiles in your country and an organized system of roadways, but no automobile makers, then the entire transportation industry will be controlled by outside foreign transportation interests, who decide where roads are to be built and for what purpose. This example is unique because at the moment, out of the 55 countries on the continent of Africa, not one has an official domestic automobile maker. However, thousands of miles of road has been built to transport resources in and out of the country. Furthermore, the purchase of automobiles allows for cash flow to exit the country in vast amounts to foreign corporations who in turn use the monies to assist their foreign national government interests. The automobile industry must account for a huge amount of cash flow wealth extraction, which exits the African continent or Black communities each year.
For Blacks living in the United States, participation in industry is not a new concept. In the early history of the United States from the 17th Century to the 20th Century, trillions of dollars have been made for White American industrialists, planters, banks, and shippers, using Blacks as laborers and skilled workers in the cotton, sugar, tobacco, and various industries, in which Blacks were the dominate labor force. Even today, Blacks in the US will spend $1.1 trillion dollars in 2014-2015, to be reaped by foreign Corporate owners. This mass extraction of wealth from the Black American communities has been routine beginning in the trans- Atlantic Slave Trade and has built a huge section of the wealth in the United States or rather, the European and Asian world, past and present. The ability to retain the income of Blacks in their communities, is crippled by their lack of industrial ownership. Blacks participate, but do not share in reaping the benefits of their participation as a whole, for their neighborhoods are often dilapidated, their neighborhood businesses controlled by foreigners, and thus their families spoiled due to the extraction of wealth (monies or the people themselves) and destructive corporate commercial policies (drugs & alcohol, police security, food choice, education, concept of beauty, environmental negligence, etc.) In many ways, Black communities in the United States are in the same economic situation as Black communities in Africa and worldwide. The failure of the Black nation in the United States to understand and perceive this fact is the primary reason for its continuation. If we use the above example of automobile purchases versus automobile makers in the Untied States, billions of dollars is taken out of the Black Communities to be given to foreign automobile makers (German, Japanese, Korean, White American etc.) who neither live or invest in their respective communities. Had those monies remained, would Black American communities be havens for illegal drugs, hedonistic products, crime, poor education, or any of the various issues facing them? The answer is undoubtable no.
While the many white Americans may not individually possess ill racial prejudices against Blacks, their sublime alliegence to the status quo or failure to retain reformation measures within American society, whether as a backlash to civil rights or the amnesia of the purpose of installing certain laws, allows for White Americans as a whole to continue to effectively crush Blacks under the same racist economic agenda as the antebellum period, whether conscious or not. The same can be said for Europeans and their relation to Black countries in Africa, the Caribbean, and South America. Successful Blacks, without recognition of the economic situation of the Black community as a whole, also perpetuate a crushing economic agenda against Black nations, with the exception of many Black Industrialists & Entrepreneurs who invest in Black communities, but including the educated to highly educated, who essentially become laborers in the traditional Euro-Asian economic structure. High education of Blacks also contributes to the outflow of millions of dollars to the education industry, while few question this analysis because of the benefit and danger of losing this "privilege stance," in the economic structure. Many prominent Blacks have become allied with the traditional economic structure which serves to devalue Black communities of any value. This is a telling dilemma among intellectuals who recognize an imperial or colonial "stranglehold," on the world economy, which in many ways is less free competition and more anti-Black competition. An anti-Black competition economic structure whether on purpose or unintentional allows for the continual extraction of wealth from Black communities worldwide. For this reason, the industrialization of Black America and Black Africa is imperative.
There are many industries to begin this process, clothing, cosmetics, food, media publishing (television programming, Newspaper, magazine, website), computer, marketing, drug, medical, construction, waste, natural resource utility, agriculture-husbandry, educational, transportation (auto, rail, ship commerce, and air), scientific, communication, banking, military, law and any post modern industry. The ability to begin profiting from such enterprises is already being reaped and has been for centuries by foreign organizations. The purchasing power of Blacks worldwide each year is well into the trillions of dollars. The goal of each industry will be to supply the products needed by Blacks communities to perpetually thrive domestically. A perpetually thriving domestic economic structure in the Black community will produce products which serve some benefit for Blacks and thereby naturally addresses many of the issues facing the Black community today. For, further example, an African center auto industry would produce vehicles which use African resources and restructure the design of where roads are built and how. If an African Auto Industry developed electric environmentally friendly vehicles, these cars would change the domestic economies in which cash flow would cease to flow outward, but inward towards themselves.
(excerpt by Cowan Amaye-Obu 2014)
It is short sighted and corrupt to depend on the Global European status quo and their current major markets of goods, oil, and other refined raw materials, to provide the budgets for our African nations. This shows in fact that our participation in the Global capitalist system, up to the point of the above recognition of shortsightedness, has been to the advantage of the buyer and not the seller. For example, Nigerian oil prices can be determined by foreign interests, soliciting to buy oil at a comfortable price, but at a huge opportunity cost of environmental pollution, resource extraction, and a myriad of other local & national issues. If the Nigerian economy and infrastructure, instead was the major consumer and developer of their own oil & its byproducts, then their participation in the World Oil market would be better suited. In the end, the precious Nigerian oil is purchased at far lower prices than valued because the interest of the seller is to sell, amid varying price levels. If the Nigerian Government continues to depend on oil revenues to line the government budget coffers, and fail to develop and invest in the local infrastructures of the areas where the oil has been taken, then when oil is no longer a major commodity worldwide, the lost of revenue coupled with the lost of trust by the local clans would be sufficient enough to spark a second Civil War, due to the reasons mentioned above.
To move this challenge forward, I would like to outline goals for individual African Nations to obtain. I support the country of Nigeria creating an automobile, preferably electric for future gains, but designed for the Nigerian oil sector.
Also, Solar Energy is the industry of the 21st Century. Fear of Nuclear Power has led the nation of Japan to declare its intention on becoming 100% Solar by 2040. Germany has stated that half of its energy will be produced by renewable energy by 2050. And at the dawn of the historic flight of Solar Impulse 2, an aircraft powered by Solar energy, the writing is on the wall for global markets... Go solar or bust! Global Warming is the bust, in this cliche and it doesn't take a genius to know the potential of developing a renewable infrastructure before the rest of the world.
Solar Power should be an investment in the development, implementation, and consequential educational sustainment on the African continent. What place in the world commands more sun light than the nations of this continent. Why should the USA, Japan, and Germany lead the industry in obtaining a resource like sunlight, which we are more than abundant with? If we allow this lead by those above nations, we will again find ourselves selling our natural resources for our lost and their gain, just like with our precious oil, and other raw materials. Corporate giants from Europe, America and Asia will be knocking of the door of African nations for their access to Solar Energy. Why not use this information to begin designing our redevelopment based on ideals which are essential to African customs and not foreign interest. Foreigners came to Africa and built roads and train stations through our precious forests, and dug up acres of beautiful land for mining, based on what foreign Nations value. This 21st Century, we have the opportunity to reverse the Global Market Place in our favor and in return, restore that confidence which once graced our entire continent with the immense wealth, the love of ourselves and pride in our various African customs. Let the nations of Africa invest in themselves, and in the future of natural renewable resources, and watch their posterity relive the days in the Land of Gods, Kings and Queens.
