What if we hypothesize that manufacturing is an offshoot of culture? That might lead us to ask the question: what cultural traits create and sustain manufacturing at scale? And to then examine the relative presence of those traits in our culture and those of societies with manufacturing as entrenched industry.
Take a trait like precision. This is central to repeatability. If you create something that you can’t recreate repeatedly, that’s art.
Next, take codification. This enables reliable and durable transfer of your knowledge to enable others to do what you do precisely how you do it. i.e. scale.
Taking just these two, we can evaluate how high our culture ranks. On precision, think of herbs with no dosage, recipes with no measures, etc. What about codification? Traditions are mostly orally transferred, and I suspect that most people can’t even do something as basic as reliably trace their lineage past their great-grandfather.
A culture that ranks so low on these rudimentary traits will find it quite challenging to develop and sustain manufacturing as an industry.
These are not standalone traits; they compound individually and are mutually self-reinforcing. Precision as a discipline is critical to learning and improving, and codification builds a long-term knowledge base and shortens innovation cycles - together, they form part of the cultural gear system that drives manufacturing. I suspect that the absence of those traits also interacts in a similar fashion to create learned incapacity to build innovation systems.
Can we shift these tectonic plates in our culture? The answer is yes, but it will require intentional efforts to seed these and other traits in culture. I think the most consequential thing we can do to begin this work is to completely redesign what we incentivise. People don't do the 'right' things; they do the things that are rewarded.
Yes, not difficult to argue that the "cultural ingredients" are not present at the moment. But these things can be changed and there are countless examples of people changing either on their own or after contact with outsiders. So for me it is the persistence and resistance to change for so long that really needs an answer. I do know/think that Nigerians are very susceptible to a bully pulpit but that tool remains underexplored. The question of what the country is waiting for remains unanswered
I think the most important thing you highlighted here is the arbitrage and information asymmetry are big money makers in Nigeria, the rules of the game are what consistently produce the outcomes we complain about. From business to bureaucracy middlemen are everywhere profiting off the information asymmetry, consistently rewarded. The actual producers suffer, be it the pre colonial cloth production in Kano or modern day internal agricultural market, most of the profits go to middlemen.
Believe it or not , this change is already under way a lot faster than you can imagine. The Chinese have moved from setting up trading houses here to setting up or buying factories. Dangotes cement monopoly will soon meet a chinese company making prefabricated concrete buildings. Soon the cars will be assembled in Nigeria in greater scale. Trading persists in Nigeria because anything other than trading taxes our sadly minimal innovative ability. We are adaptable but not innovative enough either as people or as a society.
The Arabs (Ay-rabs to our Yanqui invaders) are another trading civ. Might be interesting to examine their disparate response to industrialising impulses from the Orient. They're all 'effectively' monarchies, yet one can observe industrial disparity between Morocco, Egypt, and the Gulf States (Levantine Arabs nah another tori). Our soon-to-be-Ecowas overlords are obviously playing on a different field.
Point is that China is here. It's up to everybody else how they adapt by grafting onto their trunk. For the Nigerian car buyer, what will you do with the surplus that no longer flows to the middleman? You can listen to some Google Ad and 'satisfy your cravings', lever into a 2x ETF, or check out some Alibaba listings for yet another side hustle. There are no easy answers, but involution is just the market economy at work.
Agreed. I'm not sad to lose some car dealers to the Chinese wave. Might shed a tear briefly but no more than one tear. I am more concerned as you say with the response that Nigeria and Nigerians can muster.
I noticed a couple of recent developments in the Nigerian car business: 1. There are talks of the government licensing car dealers "to ensure the reduction of sharp practices". Secondly, the government recently changed the duties on cars, and it mostly targeted the size of the car engines: low-capacity engines of the same cars had lower tariffs. Seeing that Chinese cars often have lower engines than their American counterparts and knowing how Nigeria operates, one can argue that we are experiencing "the hand of Esau, but the voice of Jacob".
The precolonial and colonial history really key as are the efforts of Peter Thomas and the Garveyite Shackleford to establish bread manufacturing in the 1920s. In fact, this was the big thrust of the Lagos UNIA branch after Garvey had set up the Negro Factories Corporation in 1920. But they didn't control the state and so couldn't make economic development policies dominant as the Meijj state was doing in Japan at roughly the same period. Early 19th century Kano with its significant craft sectors in cloth, dyeing and leather-working certainly had the potential to innovate and industrialize like Meiji Japan but didn't. Instead the direction taken was towards slave raiding and enslavement on a very large scale--larger than in the Caribbean. Yet Sokoto must have been aware of efforts to modernize in 19th century Egypt and the Ottoman Empire, given their trading ties to Tripoli and Cairo. But a different choice was made. The British and French reinforced this with their anti-manufacturing stance in colonial economic policy: ‘legitimate COMMERCE’ not manufacturing was the mantra. As a result, groundnut/palm oil/cocoa trading become dominant which is the historic source of the wealth of at least one famous contemporary billionaire. So here we are. Who controls the state remains the key.
Sultan Bello certainly was very knowledgeable on what was going on in other parts of the world so ignorance was not an excuse. And yes, there was no "legitimate MANUFACTURING!"
There was significant manufacturing across west Africa. Kano textiles clothed people from Tripoli to Timbuktu and was used as currency in itself, Oyo and asante likewise manufactured textiles and with the right stimulus could've developed into true industrial manufacturing. Kano had already basically reached proto industrial production by the late 19th century, they had a putting out system that was quite shallow but could've developed but capital was held in commodities, wives, retinues, slaves because there was nowhere secure to put it. Banks didn't exist, there was a mishmash of currencies and you could be arbitrarily extracted from at any point.
Thanks for your comment and for your very interesting history of the Hausa people. Whatever the disagreements (small IMO) far more important is the commitment to examine our common history in depth and with honesty. In this case, Feyi was not referring to the manufacturing potential of Kano but making an ironic critique of British 19th/20thC colonial policy to promote so-called ‘legitimate commerce’ at the expense of ‘legitimate manufacturing’ and to stifle Kano's considerable modernizing potential. Hence his remark about no ‘legitimate manufacturing.’ The entire argument rests on the premise that Kano (and elsewhere) did have the potential to modernize but colonialism AND the class interests of the ruling Sokoto aristocracy in slave raiding/trading and a slave plantation economy blocked this path. In a way, Ottoman failures to modernize despite many attempts was in general due to a similar set of class dynamics. Ethiopia's invitation to a Japanese mission after Adwa also revealing: the reforms promoted by the visiting Meiji mission also failed because of opposition from feudal elements. Likewise for the famous ‘100 day reforms’ of Qing China and the attempt at ‘self-strengthenng’ which were thwarted by the whole Imperial apparatus. Japan itself faced many very violent acts of resistance against Meiji modernization from remants of the feudal Shogunate well into the 20thC. My personal view is that the more economically progressive manufacturing/mercantile elements in Kano who at least in theory could have advanced an industrial revolution never gained control of the Sokoto state which therefore remained committed to the slave economy with disastrous results still being felt in today's rentier/trading economy and dire rural poverty. Thus the entire argument is a materialist political economy one not based on morality. OTOH, I suspect you would agree that morality, while not the basis of the argument, has to be included just as we must include it when criticizing the European Atlantic Slave Trade. Best wishes and thanks again!
Excellent response. The merchants unfortunately didn't have the necessary state backing; the system of titled offices of Sokoto meant a successful merchant would put his capital towards securing a title, because that meant more security for his capital and eventually they are coopted into the status quo.
Industrialisation needs you to sink money for a relatively significant amount of time to receive uncertain returns. It is very interesting to explore
It reminds me of English 'gentlemanly capitalism' in which the first thing wealthy industrialists did was to install their children in a large country house and to become a landed 'Squire'. Or to buy gilts on the London money market. Or both, like Ricardo. One of the reasons for British decline
I disagree on several points. We are looking at history from a point of view of things having already been concluded. Africans were and are capable of innovation but innovation doesn't happen in a vacuum, it responds to certain incentives and in many parts of the continent the incentives were not there. Japan had island geography to protect it from immediate predation, a very long history of literacy, coal and iron in relative abundance, when colonial pressure came it wasn't immediate and Japan had 30 years of breathing room and the benefit of being far, they also didn't face a racial doctrine built upon their inferiority at the same level Africans were placed at. Egypt was an example of African modernisation that still ended in colonisation anyway, Egypt even began before Japan. Powers like Spain were in Europe and still failed to properly industrialise, it's not as cut and dry.
Sokoto had no coal, had abundant land and scarce labour relative to the available land , the available labour was cheap due to slavery and feudalism and thus wouldn't incentivise industrial production. It breeds a landed aristocracy whose incentive is to preserve the forced agricultural labour system. We saw that in Brazil, Rome, the American south and anywhere there's been a landed slaveholding aristocracy, it's not morality, it's simple economics and incentives, no class ever moves to abolish itself. If you wanted to set up a textile mill in 19th century Kano you'd have to acquire machinery and either drag it across the Sahara or up the Niger river through territory you did not control. You can't rely on river power as the rivers are seasonal, charcoal is not abundant in the region, the available coal is lignite which isn't very useful for most industries. Then there's the technical expertise, which they could've gotten from the ottomans but a lot of things have to be in place. Was slave raiding immoral and self destructive? Of course, was it illogical in a cavalry aristocracy in a region where people were a source of wealth in themselves, wage labour existed alongside slavery and the people, as everyone across the continent mostly worked with what they had, could it have been done differently? Of course, but we have the benefit of hindsight that spans over a century.
Buy sheep, sell deer, control state! The latter bit is the key as both JaJa and the recent akara episode make clear back to the great Mansa Musa himself. If they lose that last bit, then...
Not one of your best pieces, if you do not mind my say so. You list the manifestations of a real trend, but did not attempt to provide any historical or economic issues leading to these trends. I suggest that, if the latter was your intent, you could have met it within the length of your piece. This particular article reminds me of your article about Dangote not being about to industrialise Nigeria. You notice the symptoms, comment on them, but not, in my opinion, in any way that illuminates the relevant political economy issues to your readers. And in a lot of cases, the relevant political economic issues can be laid bare using everyday words. By the way, in my opinion, one policy of the Nigerian dominant political classes which has created the background, for what you are described in both articles, is that they (the dominant Nigerian classes, who are doing very well from importing and selling foreign-made goods) do not want to create the infrastructure for the growth of SMEs, or any significant local production in Nigeria. See how much effort they are putting into electrification. A look at Rwanda, for example, exposes a different set of priorities. There are much to detest about Paul Kagame, but one can still appreciate the efforts of his regime, if yet unsuccessful, to build a Rwandan textile industry. The Nigerian ruling classes do not prioritise the development of any industry. The actions of Dangote (monopoly opportunities and no need for R&D to fight rivals) and those of the Chinese wideboys in Nigeria (the leaders of the corrupt/weak state, which do not have a national industrialisation policy, only interfere when there is personal gratification for one of its members, ) are obvious results. By the way, even the more experienced EU political leaders, and the CEOs of long-established German car companies, are struggling as to how to deal with the influx of cheap Chinese-made cars into Europe!
If I knew what the cause was I would have listed it in the piece. Hence why I said explicitly I have not been able to find an answer? But you have also repeated the point without saying much either - why is it the case that the Nigerian elite or whoever else do not prioritise production as you say? Is it a genetic endowment or learned behaviour?
I am not sure what to make of the Rwanda point - electricity there costs about 6x what it costs in neighbouring Ethiopia. There is no real manufacturing going on there hence why it's an economy focused on services. If one were to compare Rwanda to Ethiopia on that basis, would it just be enough to say it is because Kagame does not prioritise the development of industry relative to Ethiopia but prioritises it more relative to Nigeria?
First, I would like to say that I appreciate your writings in general. Please keep on. We need you in this atmosphere where comments are made as if all that motives everybody in Nigeria is their ethnic affiliation - nobody soils their hands with action which leads to individual gains - which we need to understand if anything is to change. There are very few other sites, devoted solely to Nigerian issues, which are worth bothering to read.
The only point I wanted to make, is the general need to provide description of the immediate economic (better political economy - how economic interests interact with the political agents taking decisions) interests which are leading to produce any particular developments, or situations, we observe. For this purpose, maybe, as you suggest, some of the industrialisation policies of Abiy Ahmed Ethiopia might be more straightforward to contrast with the effective lack of a national industrialisation policy in Nigeria.
I mentioned the need for anchoring discussions in the relevant aspects of political economy, but confuse issues with my last sentence. The reality is: European political leaders and CEOs of German car companies are only struggling in competing with Chinese cheap car imports into Europe because the CEOs, abetted by Brussels, would rather continue some of the most generous share buybacks/dividend payments in any industry, instead of retaining profits, to use in modernising their car production facilities and thereby be in positions to effectively compete with the Chinese car manufacturers. The political economy is different to that in Nigeria - the economic interests of the local players in each case are different, but one cannot make sense of the headlines in either Europe or Nigeria, without understanding these local interests and how they are reproduced.
Insightful read. The trading mentality is something that I have always pondered also. Trade could be the start, but it should not be the ultimate goal or where we put a full stop.
I have a question though. With the influx of these Chinese cars in Nigeria, what is the fate of local car manufacturing companies? They already struggle against importers who sell foreign cars with large markups, how would they cope with cheaper cars when the middlemen are removed from the equation?
You made a key point about the variations in European industrialization. We have this picture of a uniformly 'modern' Europe when in fact modernization came late to many, especially Italy, Spain, Portugal and parts of Scandinavia. In a sense, Norway has yet to industrialize! Denmark never even develop the classic factory system like Britain/Germany/US. Sweden also late and really a branch of the German economy, like Denmark. France also very distinctive pattern in which small scale manufacturing and peasant farming remained strong for decades and even now in farming. We need to familiarize ourselves with why the Ottoman reforms failed and the whole 'Great Divergence' debate on India/China. Without resorting to apologetics, we need to understand better and in purely political economy terms, the slave raiding and tributary economies in precolonial Africa--why they arose and persisted. The existing scholarship (Vansina/Gomez et al) helpful but woefully inadequate analytically IMO. This type of political economy was by no means unique in human history as a similar dynamic emerged in parts of Southeastern Europe hence the original 'Slav' etymology (see Kubbel and Malowist). Generally we need to dig much deeper as well as more broadly. Below are some prelim ideas on the issues. Would welcome your comments
If, for whatever reason, the surplus generated in agriculture is relatively small, then this limits craft specialization as well as what the ruling elite can extract from 'commoners.' No matter how much they plunder, the surplus is finite and only goes so far. Further, it has to be shared with 'junior chiefs' and 'headmen' and that reduces what is available to the center even more. If you're lucky to have large deposits of gold, then long distance trade will provide a nice surplus for the elite without having to raise the productivity of agriculture. So a situation develops (Ghana/Mali/Songhai Zimbabwe) in which a well-off essentially trading/extractive elite arises which controls the state and sits atop 'traditional' village society without facing competitive pressures to transform agriculture as their surplus is secured. This is basically the old argument of Kubbel and Malowist. However there are 2 big problems: 1) How do you get the gold, if like Mali/Songhai, it's msinly further South in Mossi and Asante/Denkyira/Wassaw? Then you have to conquer them by force of arms and just take it! 2) What if you have little or no gold? What are you going to trade in those lucrative long distance circuits? Why people of course! In this latter case, the 'commodity' now entering long distance trade becomes the people themselves. Trading in people now becomes the main basis of the political economy, where possible supplemented with trade in other commodities (gold/kola/cloth/leather work/ironware etc). In some cases (Sokoto) enslavement on a large scale actually moves from just a trade, to become the foundation of the national economy. Crafts manufacturing which may well have developed to a fine level, is marginalized and subordinated. Merchants aspire to acquire titles as you point out, instead of plowing profits back into furthering craft modernization. This is a slippery slope and a truly deadly turn of events. Among other things, it means further ethnic fragmentation as raiding and counter-raiding become endemic. It means that when European colonial powers arrive to conquer in the 19th century, resistance can't succeed. Resistance is frequent and brave, but fails. It fails because the distrust and enmities bred by decades of mutual raiding means your neighbors gladly help the British/French/Germans and in fact take satisfaction in your comeuppance. A similar drama unfolded in India and elsewhere: divide and rule. There is no powerful centralized Meiji state to resist and then hurriedly push to modernize. Even the once-powerful Qing dynasty was laid low by the British in 1839. Colonial conquest with its hypocritical, racistl and self-serving 'Indirect rule' then reinforced the worst tendencies in our history. The leadership which emerged in the postcolonial period faced difficult geopolitical/economic challenges and though some valiant attempts were made (Nkrumah), for various reasons, many outside their control, they failed. So here we are in an even more complex geopolitical/economic context but with much weaker leadership all round. It will change. I am sure of it!
All this on the supply side only. But of course, no supply without demand. That's key and requires a whole bigger and more complex analysis of African long distance trading/political relations with Demand economies in Mediterranean/Middle East/India/Atlantic and in other parts of Africa. Why the demand? Why Africa?
The Gujarati analogy isn’t accurate: Gujarat, the state, does have a lot of industry but for the most part Gujaratis (like Ambani and Adani) operate only old, dirty industries like oil and chemicals, nothing cutting edge. It’s the Parsi Tatas, headed by a South Indian, that setup both the Airbus and semiconductor joint ventures in Gujarat, because it’s Modi’s home state and he laid out the red carpet for them. You’ll rarely find a Gujarati CEO in the West—Microsoft, Alphabet, IBM, Adobe, etc., CEOs are all South Indian. Plenty of Gujarati CFOs though. Gujarati startup founders tend to go for easy, copycat businesses, not moonshots. The Gujarati mindset is not much different than the Nigerian, right down to Gujarat being an epicenter of 419 scams.
I could have been more precise so your comment is partly fair. I used Tata’s aircraft project as evidence of advanced industry in Gujarat, when they are more evidence of Gujarat’s success in attracting advanced industry which is another way of saying the same thing (they have a taste for the more complex higher value stuff and put a lot of effort and resources into attracting them). But Parsi and Gujarati are not mutually exclusive identities (Jamsetji Tata was born in Navsari into a Parsi family whose roots wre firmly in the state). And I think it says something that Tata itself began as a trading firm in 1868 before moving into textiles, steel, power, engineering and other forms of production. There are other better examples like Zydus (based in Ahmedabad) that developed India’s first indigenously discovered new chemical entity to reach the market and the world’s first approved DNA Covid vaccine.
All Parsis trace their roots to Gujarat because that's where their ancestors landed after fleeing Iran so generalizing from that is like generalizing about South Africans from Elon Musk. Yes, there are some exceptions like Zydus but they are few and far between. I know because I live there. And it's not just Gujaratis, the quality of Indian goods and services is, with a few exceptions, abysmal. India will soon assemble the majority of iPhones sold worldwide this year but everything, down to the screws, is imported from China.
What if we hypothesize that manufacturing is an offshoot of culture? That might lead us to ask the question: what cultural traits create and sustain manufacturing at scale? And to then examine the relative presence of those traits in our culture and those of societies with manufacturing as entrenched industry.
Take a trait like precision. This is central to repeatability. If you create something that you can’t recreate repeatedly, that’s art.
Next, take codification. This enables reliable and durable transfer of your knowledge to enable others to do what you do precisely how you do it. i.e. scale.
Taking just these two, we can evaluate how high our culture ranks. On precision, think of herbs with no dosage, recipes with no measures, etc. What about codification? Traditions are mostly orally transferred, and I suspect that most people can’t even do something as basic as reliably trace their lineage past their great-grandfather.
A culture that ranks so low on these rudimentary traits will find it quite challenging to develop and sustain manufacturing as an industry.
These are not standalone traits; they compound individually and are mutually self-reinforcing. Precision as a discipline is critical to learning and improving, and codification builds a long-term knowledge base and shortens innovation cycles - together, they form part of the cultural gear system that drives manufacturing. I suspect that the absence of those traits also interacts in a similar fashion to create learned incapacity to build innovation systems.
Can we shift these tectonic plates in our culture? The answer is yes, but it will require intentional efforts to seed these and other traits in culture. I think the most consequential thing we can do to begin this work is to completely redesign what we incentivise. People don't do the 'right' things; they do the things that are rewarded.
Yes, not difficult to argue that the "cultural ingredients" are not present at the moment. But these things can be changed and there are countless examples of people changing either on their own or after contact with outsiders. So for me it is the persistence and resistance to change for so long that really needs an answer. I do know/think that Nigerians are very susceptible to a bully pulpit but that tool remains underexplored. The question of what the country is waiting for remains unanswered
I think the most important thing you highlighted here is the arbitrage and information asymmetry are big money makers in Nigeria, the rules of the game are what consistently produce the outcomes we complain about. From business to bureaucracy middlemen are everywhere profiting off the information asymmetry, consistently rewarded. The actual producers suffer, be it the pre colonial cloth production in Kano or modern day internal agricultural market, most of the profits go to middlemen.
Yes, this is a longstanding problem and it leads to all kinds of weird behaviour that incentivises information hoarding since information is money
Believe it or not , this change is already under way a lot faster than you can imagine. The Chinese have moved from setting up trading houses here to setting up or buying factories. Dangotes cement monopoly will soon meet a chinese company making prefabricated concrete buildings. Soon the cars will be assembled in Nigeria in greater scale. Trading persists in Nigeria because anything other than trading taxes our sadly minimal innovative ability. We are adaptable but not innovative enough either as people or as a society.
Oh no! Dangote Cement facing Chinese competition? That will make me very sad 😐
We may all then have to be ready to be sad (or is it sadder?) as Chinese competition would not notice our tears!
The Arabs (Ay-rabs to our Yanqui invaders) are another trading civ. Might be interesting to examine their disparate response to industrialising impulses from the Orient. They're all 'effectively' monarchies, yet one can observe industrial disparity between Morocco, Egypt, and the Gulf States (Levantine Arabs nah another tori). Our soon-to-be-Ecowas overlords are obviously playing on a different field.
Point is that China is here. It's up to everybody else how they adapt by grafting onto their trunk. For the Nigerian car buyer, what will you do with the surplus that no longer flows to the middleman? You can listen to some Google Ad and 'satisfy your cravings', lever into a 2x ETF, or check out some Alibaba listings for yet another side hustle. There are no easy answers, but involution is just the market economy at work.
Agreed. I'm not sad to lose some car dealers to the Chinese wave. Might shed a tear briefly but no more than one tear. I am more concerned as you say with the response that Nigeria and Nigerians can muster.
I noticed a couple of recent developments in the Nigerian car business: 1. There are talks of the government licensing car dealers "to ensure the reduction of sharp practices". Secondly, the government recently changed the duties on cars, and it mostly targeted the size of the car engines: low-capacity engines of the same cars had lower tariffs. Seeing that Chinese cars often have lower engines than their American counterparts and knowing how Nigeria operates, one can argue that we are experiencing "the hand of Esau, but the voice of Jacob".
Amazing! I missed the news and just googled it. Hahaha https://www.vanguardngr.com/2026/04/fg-begins-nationwide-registration-of-car-dealers-to-sanitise-auto-market/
The precolonial and colonial history really key as are the efforts of Peter Thomas and the Garveyite Shackleford to establish bread manufacturing in the 1920s. In fact, this was the big thrust of the Lagos UNIA branch after Garvey had set up the Negro Factories Corporation in 1920. But they didn't control the state and so couldn't make economic development policies dominant as the Meijj state was doing in Japan at roughly the same period. Early 19th century Kano with its significant craft sectors in cloth, dyeing and leather-working certainly had the potential to innovate and industrialize like Meiji Japan but didn't. Instead the direction taken was towards slave raiding and enslavement on a very large scale--larger than in the Caribbean. Yet Sokoto must have been aware of efforts to modernize in 19th century Egypt and the Ottoman Empire, given their trading ties to Tripoli and Cairo. But a different choice was made. The British and French reinforced this with their anti-manufacturing stance in colonial economic policy: ‘legitimate COMMERCE’ not manufacturing was the mantra. As a result, groundnut/palm oil/cocoa trading become dominant which is the historic source of the wealth of at least one famous contemporary billionaire. So here we are. Who controls the state remains the key.
Sultan Bello certainly was very knowledgeable on what was going on in other parts of the world so ignorance was not an excuse. And yes, there was no "legitimate MANUFACTURING!"
There was significant manufacturing across west Africa. Kano textiles clothed people from Tripoli to Timbuktu and was used as currency in itself, Oyo and asante likewise manufactured textiles and with the right stimulus could've developed into true industrial manufacturing. Kano had already basically reached proto industrial production by the late 19th century, they had a putting out system that was quite shallow but could've developed but capital was held in commodities, wives, retinues, slaves because there was nowhere secure to put it. Banks didn't exist, there was a mishmash of currencies and you could be arbitrarily extracted from at any point.
Thanks for your comment and for your very interesting history of the Hausa people. Whatever the disagreements (small IMO) far more important is the commitment to examine our common history in depth and with honesty. In this case, Feyi was not referring to the manufacturing potential of Kano but making an ironic critique of British 19th/20thC colonial policy to promote so-called ‘legitimate commerce’ at the expense of ‘legitimate manufacturing’ and to stifle Kano's considerable modernizing potential. Hence his remark about no ‘legitimate manufacturing.’ The entire argument rests on the premise that Kano (and elsewhere) did have the potential to modernize but colonialism AND the class interests of the ruling Sokoto aristocracy in slave raiding/trading and a slave plantation economy blocked this path. In a way, Ottoman failures to modernize despite many attempts was in general due to a similar set of class dynamics. Ethiopia's invitation to a Japanese mission after Adwa also revealing: the reforms promoted by the visiting Meiji mission also failed because of opposition from feudal elements. Likewise for the famous ‘100 day reforms’ of Qing China and the attempt at ‘self-strengthenng’ which were thwarted by the whole Imperial apparatus. Japan itself faced many very violent acts of resistance against Meiji modernization from remants of the feudal Shogunate well into the 20thC. My personal view is that the more economically progressive manufacturing/mercantile elements in Kano who at least in theory could have advanced an industrial revolution never gained control of the Sokoto state which therefore remained committed to the slave economy with disastrous results still being felt in today's rentier/trading economy and dire rural poverty. Thus the entire argument is a materialist political economy one not based on morality. OTOH, I suspect you would agree that morality, while not the basis of the argument, has to be included just as we must include it when criticizing the European Atlantic Slave Trade. Best wishes and thanks again!
Excellent response. The merchants unfortunately didn't have the necessary state backing; the system of titled offices of Sokoto meant a successful merchant would put his capital towards securing a title, because that meant more security for his capital and eventually they are coopted into the status quo.
Industrialisation needs you to sink money for a relatively significant amount of time to receive uncertain returns. It is very interesting to explore
It reminds me of English 'gentlemanly capitalism' in which the first thing wealthy industrialists did was to install their children in a large country house and to become a landed 'Squire'. Or to buy gilts on the London money market. Or both, like Ricardo. One of the reasons for British decline
I disagree on several points. We are looking at history from a point of view of things having already been concluded. Africans were and are capable of innovation but innovation doesn't happen in a vacuum, it responds to certain incentives and in many parts of the continent the incentives were not there. Japan had island geography to protect it from immediate predation, a very long history of literacy, coal and iron in relative abundance, when colonial pressure came it wasn't immediate and Japan had 30 years of breathing room and the benefit of being far, they also didn't face a racial doctrine built upon their inferiority at the same level Africans were placed at. Egypt was an example of African modernisation that still ended in colonisation anyway, Egypt even began before Japan. Powers like Spain were in Europe and still failed to properly industrialise, it's not as cut and dry.
Sokoto had no coal, had abundant land and scarce labour relative to the available land , the available labour was cheap due to slavery and feudalism and thus wouldn't incentivise industrial production. It breeds a landed aristocracy whose incentive is to preserve the forced agricultural labour system. We saw that in Brazil, Rome, the American south and anywhere there's been a landed slaveholding aristocracy, it's not morality, it's simple economics and incentives, no class ever moves to abolish itself. If you wanted to set up a textile mill in 19th century Kano you'd have to acquire machinery and either drag it across the Sahara or up the Niger river through territory you did not control. You can't rely on river power as the rivers are seasonal, charcoal is not abundant in the region, the available coal is lignite which isn't very useful for most industries. Then there's the technical expertise, which they could've gotten from the ottomans but a lot of things have to be in place. Was slave raiding immoral and self destructive? Of course, was it illogical in a cavalry aristocracy in a region where people were a source of wealth in themselves, wage labour existed alongside slavery and the people, as everyone across the continent mostly worked with what they had, could it have been done differently? Of course, but we have the benefit of hindsight that spans over a century.
Buy sheep, sell deer, control state! The latter bit is the key as both JaJa and the recent akara episode make clear back to the great Mansa Musa himself. If they lose that last bit, then...
Not one of your best pieces, if you do not mind my say so. You list the manifestations of a real trend, but did not attempt to provide any historical or economic issues leading to these trends. I suggest that, if the latter was your intent, you could have met it within the length of your piece. This particular article reminds me of your article about Dangote not being about to industrialise Nigeria. You notice the symptoms, comment on them, but not, in my opinion, in any way that illuminates the relevant political economy issues to your readers. And in a lot of cases, the relevant political economic issues can be laid bare using everyday words. By the way, in my opinion, one policy of the Nigerian dominant political classes which has created the background, for what you are described in both articles, is that they (the dominant Nigerian classes, who are doing very well from importing and selling foreign-made goods) do not want to create the infrastructure for the growth of SMEs, or any significant local production in Nigeria. See how much effort they are putting into electrification. A look at Rwanda, for example, exposes a different set of priorities. There are much to detest about Paul Kagame, but one can still appreciate the efforts of his regime, if yet unsuccessful, to build a Rwandan textile industry. The Nigerian ruling classes do not prioritise the development of any industry. The actions of Dangote (monopoly opportunities and no need for R&D to fight rivals) and those of the Chinese wideboys in Nigeria (the leaders of the corrupt/weak state, which do not have a national industrialisation policy, only interfere when there is personal gratification for one of its members, ) are obvious results. By the way, even the more experienced EU political leaders, and the CEOs of long-established German car companies, are struggling as to how to deal with the influx of cheap Chinese-made cars into Europe!
If I knew what the cause was I would have listed it in the piece. Hence why I said explicitly I have not been able to find an answer? But you have also repeated the point without saying much either - why is it the case that the Nigerian elite or whoever else do not prioritise production as you say? Is it a genetic endowment or learned behaviour?
I am not sure what to make of the Rwanda point - electricity there costs about 6x what it costs in neighbouring Ethiopia. There is no real manufacturing going on there hence why it's an economy focused on services. If one were to compare Rwanda to Ethiopia on that basis, would it just be enough to say it is because Kagame does not prioritise the development of industry relative to Ethiopia but prioritises it more relative to Nigeria?
Not sure what insight we can obtain from that.
Thanks for your prompt reply.
First, I would like to say that I appreciate your writings in general. Please keep on. We need you in this atmosphere where comments are made as if all that motives everybody in Nigeria is their ethnic affiliation - nobody soils their hands with action which leads to individual gains - which we need to understand if anything is to change. There are very few other sites, devoted solely to Nigerian issues, which are worth bothering to read.
The only point I wanted to make, is the general need to provide description of the immediate economic (better political economy - how economic interests interact with the political agents taking decisions) interests which are leading to produce any particular developments, or situations, we observe. For this purpose, maybe, as you suggest, some of the industrialisation policies of Abiy Ahmed Ethiopia might be more straightforward to contrast with the effective lack of a national industrialisation policy in Nigeria.
I mentioned the need for anchoring discussions in the relevant aspects of political economy, but confuse issues with my last sentence. The reality is: European political leaders and CEOs of German car companies are only struggling in competing with Chinese cheap car imports into Europe because the CEOs, abetted by Brussels, would rather continue some of the most generous share buybacks/dividend payments in any industry, instead of retaining profits, to use in modernising their car production facilities and thereby be in positions to effectively compete with the Chinese car manufacturers. The political economy is different to that in Nigeria - the economic interests of the local players in each case are different, but one cannot make sense of the headlines in either Europe or Nigeria, without understanding these local interests and how they are reproduced.
Insightful read. The trading mentality is something that I have always pondered also. Trade could be the start, but it should not be the ultimate goal or where we put a full stop.
I have a question though. With the influx of these Chinese cars in Nigeria, what is the fate of local car manufacturing companies? They already struggle against importers who sell foreign cars with large markups, how would they cope with cheaper cars when the middlemen are removed from the equation?
You made a key point about the variations in European industrialization. We have this picture of a uniformly 'modern' Europe when in fact modernization came late to many, especially Italy, Spain, Portugal and parts of Scandinavia. In a sense, Norway has yet to industrialize! Denmark never even develop the classic factory system like Britain/Germany/US. Sweden also late and really a branch of the German economy, like Denmark. France also very distinctive pattern in which small scale manufacturing and peasant farming remained strong for decades and even now in farming. We need to familiarize ourselves with why the Ottoman reforms failed and the whole 'Great Divergence' debate on India/China. Without resorting to apologetics, we need to understand better and in purely political economy terms, the slave raiding and tributary economies in precolonial Africa--why they arose and persisted. The existing scholarship (Vansina/Gomez et al) helpful but woefully inadequate analytically IMO. This type of political economy was by no means unique in human history as a similar dynamic emerged in parts of Southeastern Europe hence the original 'Slav' etymology (see Kubbel and Malowist). Generally we need to dig much deeper as well as more broadly. Below are some prelim ideas on the issues. Would welcome your comments
If, for whatever reason, the surplus generated in agriculture is relatively small, then this limits craft specialization as well as what the ruling elite can extract from 'commoners.' No matter how much they plunder, the surplus is finite and only goes so far. Further, it has to be shared with 'junior chiefs' and 'headmen' and that reduces what is available to the center even more. If you're lucky to have large deposits of gold, then long distance trade will provide a nice surplus for the elite without having to raise the productivity of agriculture. So a situation develops (Ghana/Mali/Songhai Zimbabwe) in which a well-off essentially trading/extractive elite arises which controls the state and sits atop 'traditional' village society without facing competitive pressures to transform agriculture as their surplus is secured. This is basically the old argument of Kubbel and Malowist. However there are 2 big problems: 1) How do you get the gold, if like Mali/Songhai, it's msinly further South in Mossi and Asante/Denkyira/Wassaw? Then you have to conquer them by force of arms and just take it! 2) What if you have little or no gold? What are you going to trade in those lucrative long distance circuits? Why people of course! In this latter case, the 'commodity' now entering long distance trade becomes the people themselves. Trading in people now becomes the main basis of the political economy, where possible supplemented with trade in other commodities (gold/kola/cloth/leather work/ironware etc). In some cases (Sokoto) enslavement on a large scale actually moves from just a trade, to become the foundation of the national economy. Crafts manufacturing which may well have developed to a fine level, is marginalized and subordinated. Merchants aspire to acquire titles as you point out, instead of plowing profits back into furthering craft modernization. This is a slippery slope and a truly deadly turn of events. Among other things, it means further ethnic fragmentation as raiding and counter-raiding become endemic. It means that when European colonial powers arrive to conquer in the 19th century, resistance can't succeed. Resistance is frequent and brave, but fails. It fails because the distrust and enmities bred by decades of mutual raiding means your neighbors gladly help the British/French/Germans and in fact take satisfaction in your comeuppance. A similar drama unfolded in India and elsewhere: divide and rule. There is no powerful centralized Meiji state to resist and then hurriedly push to modernize. Even the once-powerful Qing dynasty was laid low by the British in 1839. Colonial conquest with its hypocritical, racistl and self-serving 'Indirect rule' then reinforced the worst tendencies in our history. The leadership which emerged in the postcolonial period faced difficult geopolitical/economic challenges and though some valiant attempts were made (Nkrumah), for various reasons, many outside their control, they failed. So here we are in an even more complex geopolitical/economic context but with much weaker leadership all round. It will change. I am sure of it!
All this on the supply side only. But of course, no supply without demand. That's key and requires a whole bigger and more complex analysis of African long distance trading/political relations with Demand economies in Mediterranean/Middle East/India/Atlantic and in other parts of Africa. Why the demand? Why Africa?
The Gujarati analogy isn’t accurate: Gujarat, the state, does have a lot of industry but for the most part Gujaratis (like Ambani and Adani) operate only old, dirty industries like oil and chemicals, nothing cutting edge. It’s the Parsi Tatas, headed by a South Indian, that setup both the Airbus and semiconductor joint ventures in Gujarat, because it’s Modi’s home state and he laid out the red carpet for them. You’ll rarely find a Gujarati CEO in the West—Microsoft, Alphabet, IBM, Adobe, etc., CEOs are all South Indian. Plenty of Gujarati CFOs though. Gujarati startup founders tend to go for easy, copycat businesses, not moonshots. The Gujarati mindset is not much different than the Nigerian, right down to Gujarat being an epicenter of 419 scams.
I could have been more precise so your comment is partly fair. I used Tata’s aircraft project as evidence of advanced industry in Gujarat, when they are more evidence of Gujarat’s success in attracting advanced industry which is another way of saying the same thing (they have a taste for the more complex higher value stuff and put a lot of effort and resources into attracting them). But Parsi and Gujarati are not mutually exclusive identities (Jamsetji Tata was born in Navsari into a Parsi family whose roots wre firmly in the state). And I think it says something that Tata itself began as a trading firm in 1868 before moving into textiles, steel, power, engineering and other forms of production. There are other better examples like Zydus (based in Ahmedabad) that developed India’s first indigenously discovered new chemical entity to reach the market and the world’s first approved DNA Covid vaccine.
All Parsis trace their roots to Gujarat because that's where their ancestors landed after fleeing Iran so generalizing from that is like generalizing about South Africans from Elon Musk. Yes, there are some exceptions like Zydus but they are few and far between. I know because I live there. And it's not just Gujaratis, the quality of Indian goods and services is, with a few exceptions, abysmal. India will soon assemble the majority of iPhones sold worldwide this year but everything, down to the screws, is imported from China.