Southern Africa is Blessed

Africa has a young and healthy demographic, with citizens who are proud of their heritage and are very much in touch with today’s global society. In many ways, the young people of Africa are making meaningful and profound contributions to modern society, particularly in sectors such as politics, law, banking, finance, communications and the arts.

One sector in particular has the ability to hasten positive transformation, and that is the rural sector: traditionally is not a sector that is known for ‘trend setting’. However rural industry, encompassing all forms of primary production: food, wood and energy, is able to fast track economic growth.

Here’s why: Africa has vast areas of land which are suited to commercial industry and which also have the capability of being very productive. Africa has 9% of global fresh water, much of it south of the Sahara,² and there is now evidence accumulating that in the future Europe is going to face greater water stress than southern Africa – now there’s a thought! According to Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), Africa as a whole has 874 million hectares of land considered to be suitable for agriculture.³ About half of the population is rural based with 30% of GDP in Southern Africa coming from farming related industry.⁴

Whilst global agriculture is fast moving towards large scale, heavily industrialised form of farming, Africa is still very reliant on subsistence and family agriculture. It is a society that is on one hand driving global innovation, but on the other hand, stuck in the realms of pre-industrialisation farming practice.

With the vast scope of agrarian development, there is no reason why southern Africa should not harness this potential, in particular using the enthusiastic young, who are very willing and very capable society to reform rural business sectors. The trending statistics quoted can set initiatives to redirect the way in which food, wood and energy is produced, which will in turn further drive other aspects of the economy, such as banking, finance, law and digital communications and arts. 

Investing in rural industry, will counter-intuitively bring about a more balanced economy, not reliant purely on small scale agriculture, mining and tourism alone.