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Onye Nkuzi

@cchukudebelu

19 Mar

In the mid-1980s, real incomes fell by 65 - 70%, and that was the end of the Nigerian "middle class". In the early 1980s, virtually every university graduate was in the middle class, and the middle class was geographically dispersed (found in every state capital and major city).

Then the expectation was that every graduate should be able to afford a motor vehicle (a brand new motor vehicle, not a second-hand vehicle). There was no massive market for imported second hand vehicles then.

All that had ended by 1984, and we haven't recovered since then.

The major blow was to higher education. The best lecturers and professors left. Staff morale plummeted, laboratories were not updated with new equipment and reagents, and libraries were no longer stocked with up to date books and journals.

We haven't recovered since then.

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Onye Nkuzi

@cchukudebelu

14 Mar

It is good to listen to political scientists from the "realist school". I listened to an interview with John Mearsheimer from 2002 (then it wasn't clear how fast China would grow).

He said that US cannot be a "global hegemon", but it is a "regional hegemon" (in its hemisphere).

He said that America's grand strategy was to prevent the rise of "regional hegemons" anywhere in the world, especially Eurasia - and if China "became a bigger Hong Kong", US would have no option than to either slow its rise or contain it.

That is exactly what is happening today.

That is the point of Trump's tariffs, bans on Huawei/ZTE, "The Quad";

To either slow China's rise and/or contain it.

The US doesn't care if China's economy collapses & Africa is hit by a depression as a result. Africa's economic collapse will just be "collateral damage".

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Onye Nkuzi

@cchukudebelu

14 Mar

US politics is predictable.

There's a constituency in the Republican Party committed to ensuring that the US Government does not fund abortion or promote gay rights in Africa.

This influences the Africa policy of Republican presidents.

Conversely there's a constituency in the Democratic Party committed to ensuring that the US Government promotes gay rights in Africa.

This influences the Africa policy of Democratic Presidents.

But no US president is under any pressure to promote democracy or human rights in Africa; the same way US presidents are under pressure to react to Hong Kong.

He will not be punished at the polls if he does not.

All politics is local

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Onye Nkuzi

@cchukudebelu

14 Mar

I think we are back to HIV/AID anti-retrovirals distribution - the dynamics are similar to Covid-19 vaccine distribution.

Let is remember that Africa began to receive anti-retrovirals SEVEN years after distribution began in the West, and this was only due to PEPFAR.

I.e. Nigeria, like most African nations 20 years ago, was waiting for a "benefactor" to buy anti HIV/AID drugs.

The situation with Covid-19 is basically a repeat of that.

But other African nations like Algeria, South Africa & Egypt are acting a lot more proactively.

We are also back to a debate over intellectual property. Thailand, Brazil & India had running battles with Western pharmaceutical giants over licensing and IP of anti-retrovirals.

I recall Thailand decided to damn the consequences & do what it had to do. It was "controversial".

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Onye Nkuzi

@cchukudebelu

13 Mar

This is a gasoline generator.

Everyone in Lagos knows what it is, but none of the people in the West who craft "climate change policy for Africa" and ram it down the throats of Africans, knows what it is.

But I need to go a bit deeper.

There are 42,912,900 households in Nigeria. Even if only 10% of the households in Nigeria own a generator like this, that implies 4 million gasoline generators.

The number is almost certainly significantly higher.

Now imagine how much pollution, NOx and particulate matter emissions millions of gasoline generators emit in Nigeria/Lagos, every day?

But somebody in faraway Europe or North America will say, "let them use solar".

But solar installation costs could be 10 - 20 times higher.

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Onye Nkuzi

@cchukudebelu

13 Mar

During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the US Military destroyed a key bridge carrying 15 key oil and gas pipelines. Reconstruction was supposed to cost $5 million - but the US Military decided to bury the pipelines underground, even though studies showed the soil was too sandy.

Burying the pipelines underground was supposed to cost 5 times as much - but by the time everything was resolved, $100 million was spent.

This is how trillions of dollars were wasted during the US occupation of Iraq and corruption boomed.

Of course, there were US contractors who LOVED this environment of no-bid, ad hoc contracts, where money was no object. The loved the gravy train.

One estimate is that the war cost the US tax payer $2.4 trillion.

China's BRI in contrast is supposed to cost $1 trillion.

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