Circular kow-how economy Africa-Europe

The "Poutin" tipping point

Massive EU-investments in Africa save the entire planet

Polycrisis “Climate - Energy - Pandemics - War in Europe - Forced migrations”

  • Africa 2050: 25% world’s population, Europe 7%; Africa 2023-2050 a need for 12 million formal jobs a year.
  • Carbon offset programs stimulate investments in Africa’s productive economy. Massive European private investments and thousands of AU-EU SME industrial partnerships “for mutual benefit” create an informal but powerful Africa-Europe geopolitical entente that silences Putin. (*)
  • Green hydrogen. It is to Europe's advantage that initially, instead of fully supporting Eurocentric economic policies, Africa uses its abundant renewable energy reserves to increase the competitiveness of its own productive economy, creates millions of decent jobs, and exports only surplus green hydrogen.
  • Europe does not know “the other Africa”. Africa can choose between West and East. Europe needs Africa more than the other way around.
  • Private investors. In an era of a linked polycrisis "Climate - Energy - Putin - Migration" private investors - and Africa - finance the world. EU governments just have to promote investments in Africa, that's all!

Abundance of African renewable energy

60% of global solar, 37% of global green hydrogen production capacity

World natural resources, incl. climate strategic raw materials

 

 

 

 

Hydroelectric project GRAND INGA DR Congo (44 GW) = 49 electro-nuclear power reactors (France: 56 reactors)

Regardless of wind and sun, no nuclear waste, no risk of fallouts after military attacks or tsunamis

Africa is endowed with 37% of the world's green hydrogen production capacity at €2/kg. Energy-intensive industries such as steel, aluminium, fertilisers, petrochemicals and cement can produce without emissions. Thanks to cheap solar energy, traditional industrial production activities can also flourish in villages.

 

When Europe transfers massive experience of advanced, labour-intensive manufacturing industrialisation to Africa, the combination of an abundance of African renewable energy and manufacturing industrial skills could create up to 12 million decent jobs each year.

In 2050, Europe will represent only 7% of the world's population, Africa 25%. Africa's modern industrialisation, thanks to European know-how and investments, is driving the realistion of the world's largest AfCFTA free trade market, reducing European CO2 emissions by 25% and forming an AU-EU geopolitical agreement that silences Putin.

 

Vested entrepreneurs who invest in Africa's modern industrialisation, with their own resources, offer a solution to the global challenges of climate, energy, war in Europe and forced migration.

‘If you produce aluminium in Europe at an electricity price several times higher than in other parts of the world, what is the point of supporting these companies when you can produce more favourably elsewhere in the world? If I had an aluminium company, I wouldn't like that message”. (Thomas Leysen, UMICORE, 17/9/2022, De Tijd)

When the external costs of fossil energy and of nuclear waste and decommissioning are added to the current cost of energy, there is a real chance that, even after the Putin agression, the cost of energy in Europe will remain high and that energy-intensive industries will relocate to regions with an abundance of renewable energy. Precisely in tropical regions where 85% of the population has to survive in a precarious and hopeless daily economy. Energy-guzzling industries that operate without emissions are seeing their stock prices skyrocket.

The fairly massive transfer to Africa of advanced European manufacturing experience:

 

  1. creates up to 12 million decent jobs per year: “Jobs & Modernity”, that is what Africa is concerned about;
  2. stimulates the realisation of the world's largest AfCFTA free trade market (2050: 25% of the world's population); a new huge market for innovative EU products and services;
  3. prevents conflict and forced migration;
  4. prevents anti-Western resentments;
  5. achieves the SDGs from within;
  6. saves Europe 25% of its carbon emissions;
  7. creates an informal but powerful Africa-Europe geopolitical entente that silences Putin.

 

Therefore, in Europe:

  • NOW. Massively promote "the other Africa" to encourage experienced entrepreneurs - not micro-entrepreneurs - to invest in fairly large-scale manufacturing industries in Africa or to forge partnerships with peers, for example in the 15 sub-Saharan countries with fairly stable institutions, a highly skilled middle class, accessible industrial sites and eternally renewable energy. EU governments just have to promote “the other – promising Africa”, that's all! The modern industrialisation of ten "stable" sub-Saharan countries accelerates the prosperity across the whole of Africa.
  • NOW. Compensate for the almost inevitable gradual decline in Europe of energy-intensive medium-tech activities, and relocation to low-cost hydrogen regions, by stimulating an ecosystem in Europe that values dormant massive R&D libraries and encourages investment in innovative and more sustainable and more recyclable high-tech manufacturing industries and related services;
  • NOW. Do not leave the industrialisation of Africa and its right for modern comforts to China, India and Russia.

Africa and the academic world

  • A multidisciplinary team of academics is studying the effect of the co- and relocation of European energy-consuming industries to Africa and Africa's modern manufacturing industrialisation, submits a substantiated advice to politicians. How many jobs will be lost in Europe? How many jobs are created in Africa? In Europe? The effects on global CO2 emissions, conflicts, migration and geopolitics?
  • 4,000 billion in traditional development aid, over the last 60 years, has failed to curb the asymmetry of prosperity between the industrialised and non-industrialised worlds. . (INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT COOPERATION TODAY. A radical shift towards a global paradigm. (Develtere, Huyse, Van Ongevalle- KU Leuven-4/2021: “Over the past 60 years high-income countries have invested over 4000 billion euros in development aid. With varying degrees of success…”) 

(*) EUROPE AND AFRICA CAN CHANGE GLOBAL POLITICS IN A "REVOLUTIONARY" WAY. ‘Look at the numbers, look at the demography, look at the richness – natural resources, of the people. You are a big global player and together, Europe and Africa, can shape the features of international relations in quite a revolutionary way.’ (EC Commissioner F. Mogherini, 8/11/2018)

Circular Know-How Economy Africa-Europe: ‘Deglobalisation' of Manufacturing, ‘Globalisation’ of Know-How

22/12/2022  karel.uyttendaele { @ } pandora.be