Two economists defend that Africa needs a structural change that passes through industrialization, following the Asian example, but with innovations, namely betting on green industrialization, the internal market, and intelligent negotiation.

"We, in the book, defend very much this theory that African countries have to imitate those who industrialized before them more recently, that is, the Asian countries. But they have to do differently too," Guinean economist Carlos Lopes, co-author of the book "Structural Change in Africa. Misperceptions, new narratives and development in the 21st century," which will be launched on September 8 at the Lisbon Book Fair.

In the book, Lopes and African Development Bank economist George Kararach argue that the world has a wrong perception of Africa, fixed in the time of the renaissance, in which the continent is diminished, even in geographical terms.

This misperception is reflected, for example, in the fact that financial rating agencies "have a perception of Africa's risk that is much higher than what the numbers show," placing virtually all countries in the "junk" category, when the continent was the second region with the highest economic growth in the last two decades, only surpassed by Southeast Asia, said the Guinean economist.

The case of sovereign debt is another example of the unequal treatment given to Africa, said the author, questioning how it is possible that the entire continent, with 1.4 billion inhabitants, has a sovereign debt equivalent to that of the Netherlands and Belgium.

Lopes, a professor at the Mandela School of Public Governance at the University of Cape Town, recalled that Africa is the least financed continent in the world, with only about 1% of global funding, which compromises its development: "If it doesn't have funding, it won't develop.

And he blames, in particular, the international institutions, which, when they arrive in an African country, propose to help the countries make their comparative advantage profitable, "which is always oil, cocoa, diamonds," among others.

This means that Africa is always, at the level of world trade, reduced to the export of natural resources without transformation, so that it "will never get out of the crooked tree."

The book argues that it is not possible to solve these problems by making structural adjustment, which was the proposal of international institutions, namely the International Monetary Fund (IMF), for decades in Africa.

"What we need is structural change, not structural adjustment. And that structural change means, in practical terms, that we have to industrialize," said the economist, who since 2018 has been the African Union's high representative for negotiations with Europe.

Lopes and Kararach recognize that African leaders also have responsibilities, by accepting, "because it suits them", this model of exporting raw materials without transformation, which Carlos Lopes calls the "colonial model".

According to the researcher, 35 out of 54 African countries are now classified by the United Nations as highly dependent on the export of raw materials, i.e. they have more than 80% of their exports derived from raw materials.

And this is related to the fact that African elites have adopted a model highly dependent on the rents from these exports, instead of restructuring and diversifying their economies, "because those rents are easier to manipulate, they are easier to accumulate, (...) they are easier to use in a corrupt system.

This rent-dependent model, which researchers call rent-seeking, is opposed to structural transformation: "You can't do structural transformation with rent-seeking behavior.

At a time when African countries are increasingly looking eastward, Lopes admits that the idea of the developmental state, developed in Singapore and inspired by China, allows for the acceleration of the structural transformation advocated in the book.

It is a model in which the State is much more intervening in the establishment of industrial policies, is less interested in creating state companies - "which are fulcrums of corruption at bottom" - than in establishing incentive policies that allow a much more coordinated and ambitious development.

In the book, Lopes and Kararach argue that countries have to learn from those who industrialized before them, i.e., the Asian countries, but they have to "do it differently," namely by betting on green industrialization, which takes environmental protection into account; they have to look at their own consumption market, which is huge; and they have to negotiate their raw materials better, instead of exporting them without processing.

Although he predicts that Africa as a whole will hardly be able to make this transformation in the short term, Lopes admitted there are African countries that are heading in the right direction, working towards structural change, namely Morocco, Kenya, Ivory Coast, Senegal, or Egypt, but also some small states that are "doing miraculous things," such as Rwanda, Namibia, Togo, Djibouti, or islands like the Seychelles and Mauritius.

However, there are others who are in an illusion of growth, because if the economy grows by 2 or 2.5%, but the population increases by 1%, that means the economy is shrinking in 'per capita' terms. (Lusa)