Building a Case for Industrialization and Sustainability in Africa
Africa has been touted as one of the fastest-growing regions of the world in terms of population and expected economic growth. Its population is expected to grow by 42% to 1.7 billion by 2030 and about 2.5 billion people by 2050. Trailing this exponential population growth will be economic development on a scale that has never been seen.
Today, Africa contributes just a tiny portion to the global economy due to its low economic size and overall productivity. As its population expands in the next few years, its economy is expected to grow proportionally to its size. This makes the African market a very attractive one for all stakeholders. And due to Africa’s current structure, demographically and economically, industrialization is expected to drive this projected growth within the next few years. But growth driven by industrialization also has a major disadvantage to environmental sustainability.
An examination of the discrete ingredients that constitute an industrialized economy indicates the high probability of having increased environmental degradation as industrial activities increase. Some of these are based on a rational understanding of how environmental pollution works and also based on data from various research documents exploring the nexus between environmental pollution and industrial growth.
To put the implications of environmental degradation in better perspective. Heat energy from the sun is reflected onto the surface of the earth and then radiated back to the sun. But during radiation, the earth’s atmosphere traps some amount of the energy within the earth’s atmosphere, ensuring that the earth is moderately warmed up and the temperature does not descend too low to make the earth unhabitable, i.e. -15oC. The earth’s atmosphere is composed of 78% Nitrogen, 21% Oxygen, and 1% of other gases such as Nitrogen oxide, carbon dioxide, and methane, among others. Over time, due to increased industrial activities, we have accumulated more gases within the 1% category than is required, this has affected the atmospheric equilibrium and has led to increased retention of heat on the earth’s surface. This is the origin and meaning of global warming.
A typical case study of how the decrease in industrialization leads to less environmental degradation can be explained by examining the evolution of the Australian economy. As shown in the table and chart below, the activity shares of the major indicators of industrialization such as manufacturing and agriculture have dropped consistently from the 1960s to the 2000s. Correspondingly, the rate of greenhouse gas emissions also followed the same trend of descent. As the Australian economy shifted towards the services sector, its rate of emissions and environmental degradation reduced drastically.
At the global level, available data reveals that before the Industrial Revolution, atmospheric levels of CO2 were around 280 parts per million. In 2013, the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii, which has been measuring atmospheric CO2 levels since 1958, recorded the milestone value of 400 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere, a level not seen since around 35 million years ago.
Considering that 7 out of the top 10 most vulnerable countries to climate disasters are in Africa, we need to evaluate how the projected economic growth driven by the industrial revolution will affect the sustainability of the environment.
According to Ursula et al., a 1 percentage point increase in the value of the industry to GDP results in a 0.3% increase in CO2 emissions per capita. It was also discovered that in sub-Saharan Africa, a 1 percentage point increase in trade across the regions led to a 0.11% increase in CO2 emissions.
Also using Uganda as a case study, Appiah et al. discovered that a 1% increase in industrialization will lead to a 2.3% increase in carbon emissions in the short run and a 3.2% increase in the long run. Fortunately, a combined effort of increased industrialization, increased economic growth, and reduced energy intensity will decrease carbon emissions by 2.46% in the long run. This provides an escape route from the seemingly unending cycle of industrialization to emissions.
There is an inflection point, where the reverse process begins to occur. This phenomenon can be explained by the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC). The EKC is a hypothesized measurement of the various indicators of environmental degradation versus per capita income. As shown in the chart below, there is a progressive relationship between the rate of industrialization as an indicator of economic growth (which is measured in per capita income) and the rate of greenhouse gas emissions. The directly proportional relationship switches into an inverse relationship immediately after the per-capital income exceeded $27,000.
This implies that if an economy’s main source of growth is via industry, it will continue to generate an increasing amount of greenhouse gases until its GDP per capita crosses a hypothesized $27,000. Thence, it will be able to leverage its growth thus far to reduce its emissions and mitigate the adverse effects of industrialization that lead to environmental pollution.
Today, about 69% of Africa’s total carbon emissions are imported. This means only about 31% of the total carbon emissions attributed to Africa are due to its industrial activities. Therefore, as the population grows and industrialization expands, the region will need to adopt some precautionary measures to mitigate its greenhouse gas emissions until it has grown to a point where its emissions move inversely to its growth.
One of the most obvious precautionary measures is the adoption of renewable energy sources to mitigate the amount of energy generated via the burning of fossil fuels and correspondingly reduce the amount of CO2, NO, and methane gases released into the atmosphere. This is required to ensure that the transformation of the region’s economic landscape does not breed further harm to the sustainability of life on the continent.
In summary, the economic growth of the African region is unavoidable. But due to its economic and demographical structure, its most viable pathway to economic growth is via industrialization. It is therefore important for the responsible stakeholders to put systems in place to mitigate the negative effect of the industrial revolution on the environment by ensuring that active industry players adopt renewable energy in various forms for different uses.
