Word Power Publishing Company LLC, publisher of Unleashed is in discussions to distribute “Unleashed: A New Paradigm of African Trade with the World” in Kenya and other East African markets.
African Trade Group, the international trade and consulting arm of John Akhile’s business ventures, in conjunction with other principals, is developing a roads infrastructure project for presentation to the African Union and African countries. The multibillion dollar project will feature U.S companies and capital.
John Akhile was mentioned in an article by Wanjohi Kabukuru, a Kenyan Journalist who also writes for New African Magazine. Read the full article here.
African Trade Group is discussing a joint venture with Silicon Valley Africa Developments to promote African American investments and enterprises in African countries to facilitate greater participation of African American businesses and investors in Africa through the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act.
Read John's full report on ISI and raw dependency by following this link.
Unleashed: A New Paradigm of African Trade with the World is now available to buy at any of the sites listed below
Jobs and Prosperity for African Countries Depends on Copying Asia Tigers
by John I. Akhile Sr.
The greatest problem most if not all African countries are facing is creating jobs for the teeming population of eligible workers and by extrapolation, reducing poverty. It is a challenge that confronts every country in the world, albeit to varying degree of intensity. Not managing it successfully makes or breaks political leaders and careers, except in Africa. However, given the election results in Nigeria, it is possible that African people are finally waking up to the “power of the vote.” In my book, “Unleashed: A New Paradigm of African Trade with the World,” I drilled down on the Asian Tigers’ journey to low unemployment and prosperity to find transferable traits. And there are many. One of the most important ones is that successful economies are very good at exporting manufactured and processed goods. However, the Tigers arrived at how to do it from different directions. In Singapore, the driver was foreign companies locating plants for manufacturing products for export to their markets. In Taiwan and South Korea, it was the industrial development policy of the nations. The policies drove the creation of industrial enterprises that manufactured and processed goods for export markets which the companies opened by their efforts and initiative with assistance from their government.
Asian Tiger Phenomenon is a Copy-Cat Process
There are many commentaries and opinions that claim that African countries cannot copy the Asian Tiger's experience. It is farcical considering all the Asian Tigers copied their success from Japan and each other. The Japanese business started the ball rolling by copying U.S industry. Some of the copying happened as a result of initiatives implemented by General Douglas MacArthur during the re-building of Japan post-WWII. However, the greatest contribution to Japanese export prowess was made by W. Edward Deming, an American, who taught the Japanese how to manufacture quality products for Western markets. Taiwan and Hong Kong came next. Both of which copied their strategy from Japan down to the export marketing institutions each created. Next in line was South Korea, which copied Japan and the other two. Finally, the last of the original Tigers is Singapore. Singapore introduced a new twist on the strategy. The foundation was export-oriented development but how they got to their goal differed from the others. Unlike the other Tiger economies, Singapore does not own a majority of the enterprises that built its economy. The firms are predominantly American, but there are also firms from many other Western countries that have made Singapore a manufacturing, processing and financial services hub. The manufacturing and processing companies re-export to their home markets but also export to neighboring Asian markets.
China copied its ideas from all The Asian Tigers
Although China is not one of the Asian Tigers, it is true that China, like the Tigers, copied from Japan and all the other Tiger economies, including its arch-enemy Taiwan. Deng Xiaoping famously remarked, "it did not matter whether the cat is white or black as long as it catches mice," as a way of tamping down arguments against communists adopting and incorporating capitalist economic ideas. His genius was the ability to co-opt what was working in the West and Asia for use in building the economic success of China. The time spent in education in France and the Soviet Union helped to nurture Deng Xiaoping's genius.
Upon analyzing his philosophical realignment to China's economic challenges during and after Chairman Mao's tenure, one fact stands out. It is clear that Deng Xiaoping juxtaposed the Soviet Union and China's economic performance with that of the West and the then-newly industrializing Asian Tigers. The juxtaposition had a profound influence on the decision of the economic direction in which to guide his nation. Deng Xiaoping gained valuable insights from the success of the Asian Tigers’ efforts. For example, the success of South Korea’s steel industrialization was of particular interest to him and he sought to replicate it in China’s effort to build a modern steel industry. In 1978, during a visit to Japan, Deng Xiaoping asked Japan's Nippon Steel Corporation to build a mill in China exactly like Posco's. Nippon Steel's then-chairman, Yoshihiro Inayama, reportedly replied, "It won't do you any good unless China has a manager as good as Park Tae-joon to run it." Judging from China’s success in steel production, the effort to copy the success of Japan and South Korea has been successful.
The late Lee Kuan Yew visited China for various speaking and consultations 33 times during his time as Prime Minister of Singapore. China copied part of the idea of using its labor to produce goods for Western companies from Singapore’s experience. From Hong Kong South Korea, Japan and oversea Chinese, they learned compensation or buyback trade. In this arrangement, the Chinese supplied labor and local inputs and Western companies contributed their equipment, technical expertise, and management to manufacturing to the specification of Western companies for re-export to their home markets. It was very instrumental in laying the groundwork for China to become the preeminent manufacturer for Western companies beginning in the early 1980s.
If Asians Learned by copying so can Africans It is important to highlight a key attribute that led to the evolution of Asian Tiger’s phenomenon. The record shows that they evolved by “copying” successful strategies. Those that insist that the success of the Asian Tigers is not transferable to African nations are simply wrong. In my book, “Unleashed: A New paradigm of African Trade with the World,” I have detailed an outline that shows the originator of the Asian Tiger phenomenon was Japan. And that Japan copied a good deal of its success in exporting industrial goods from United States industry. The Japanese married an existing mercantile culture of the Keiretsu and later, Shogo Shoshas with industrial production capacity. The union formed a devastatingly successful global export trade juggernaut that culminated in Japan becoming the second (now third) greatest economy in the world. The evidence also shows that the Asian Tigers admired and copied Japanese success and also adopted successful strategies from each other. The newest entrants to the idea of export industrialization, India, Vietnam, and Bangladesh are also following in the footsteps of the original Asian Tigers because it works. There is no need to reinvent "that wheel." The assertion that African countries cannot copy what has become an international phenomenon is unfounded and presumes a depth and degree of an spiritual bankruptcy of Africans that is not materially prevalent in any African country.
The jobs Engine of Export-Oriented Industrialization Converting raw materials to finished goods will create more jobs than exporting the raw materials and also earn more income per unit of export goods for the converting country. Based on the raw materials that African countries export, the conversion will create millions of new jobs. Developing a strategy to attract companies to locate production facilities in the country to manufacture or process goods for export will create vast numbers of jobs. It has created tens of million jobs in Singapore, Mexico, China, and in other manufacturing-for-export-trans-shipment points around the world. Manufacturing for exports by indigenous companies is the path preferred by the newly industrialized export-oriented economies in Asia. The industry has created tens of millions of jobs in Asia.
Bangladesh Garment Exports: 3 Million Jobs and $27 Billion a Year Let’s see how one country, Bangladesh, has benefited from one industrial sector, textile fabrication. “Bangladesh, once poor and irrelevant to the global economy, is now an export powerhouse, second only to China in global apparel exports, as factories churn out clothing for brands like Tommy Hilfiger, Gap, Calvin Klein and H&M. Global retailers like Target and Walmart now operate sourcing offices in Dhaka, the capital. Garments are critical to Bangladesh’s economy, accounting for 80 percent of manufacturing exports and more than three million jobs.” Excerpt from New York Times article, Made in Bangladesh, Jim Yardley, August 12th, 2012. Bangladesh’s garment industry achieved $27 billion dollars in exports in 2014. That is almost one-third of the exports of Nigeria, the largest exporter in Africa. It is also noteworthy that only 5% of textile factories are owned by foreign investors, with most of the production being controlled by local (indigenous) investors.
Additional Benefits of Manufacturing for Exports Manufacturing for export benefits an economy in numerous ways. (1) It creates jobs. (2) By default, it increases hard currency flows into a nation’s coffers. (3) It has a multiplier effect on the economy through the spending of employees and its purchasing from vendors that supply goods and services to the company. (4) Promotes the country in the markets where the country's products are. (5) Products for export are also goods that will find their way into the local economy, thereby improving the supply chain capacity of the local economy. Each of the benefits contributes to a self-perpetuating cycle of beneficial attributes that boosts economic activity. Let’s look at the role that an export product of a country plays in promoting the country in a foreign market. It increases consumer awareness of the country. Consumers are more likely to visit a place with which they have an emotional or experiential connection. The connection may be from stories and recommendation of people who have visited a country or through advertising and promotional efforts of a marketing campaign to promote tourist travel to a country. Export product of a country falls into the category of advertising and promotion. In this sense, therefore, a country's export products help to promote tourist visits to the country. An industrial export is a jobs creator of unparalleled influence on the economic growth of nations. It developed and built Western nations during the mercantile era and in the modern era has built Japan, China, and the Asian Tigers. African countries should jump on the bandwagon so that they too can experience its benefits.
Terms in this article: Sogo shosha (総合商社, sōgō shōsha ?, or general trading companies) are Japanese companies that trade in a wide range of products and materials. In addition to acting as intermediaries, sōgō shōsha also engage in logistics, plant development and other services, as well as international resource exploration. Keiretsu is a business network composed of manufacturers, supply chain partners, distributors and financiers who remain financially independent but work closely together to ensure each other’s success. In Japanese, the word keiretsu means “group.” In business, the word is often used as a synonym for partnership, alliance or extended enterprise.
John I. Akhile Sr. is the author of two books: Compensatory Trade Strategy: How to Fund Import-Export Trade and Industrial Projects When Hard Currency is in Short Supply and now Unleashed: A New Paradigm of African Trade with the World. He is also the President of African Trade Group LLC., a U.S based trading company.
I became a part of the Unleashed team almost two years ago, inspired by John’s vision for his book, Unleashed: A New Paradigm of African Trade with the World, and his hope for all African nations.
At the time I was very aware of how little I knew of the continent. Aware how my idea of Africans had been skewed by the media all my life but while I knew not everyone in Africa was poor, I knew it was and is still an issue for many. One of the things that struck me most about John’s points in Unleashed is that foreign aid can’t fix Africa. Donations from people like me won’t fix Africa. Only Africans can truly fix their current state of living and they need to do it now.
Unleashed has arrived at the perfect time. The issues raised and the strategies explained in the book are truly what need to be considered for all African countries to step out of the mire history has stuck them in and step onto higher, firmer ground. Nothing proved this to me as strongly as the recent Ebola outbreak in West Africa which has finally slowed to manageable numbers since the first case almost a year ago. It should never have spun as out of control as it did, and I think it’s a powerful lesson in how important implementing the ideas of Unleashed are for the benefit of developing countries in Africa, and the world.
There are of course several key factors about why the Ebola outbreak became such a crisis in the three countries of Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia but the most important is one that Daniel Bausch, a virologist, who Scientific American interviewed in August of 2014 put very simply saying that, “[The] health-care breakdown is the main reason why the virus has spread so far this time. It doesn’t just show up, randomly appearing from the forest. Outbreaks happen where the economy and public infrastructure have fallen apart for years.”
Other countries like Nigeria and Mali were able to contain the deadly virus. That’s because they attacked the threat vigorously. Nigeria was quick to stop the virus from spreading and quarantined the first victim who landed in the country back in September of 2014. They tracked down everyone who could have been in contact with the sick individual and kept them monitored until the WHO deemed the country Ebola free, which happened within the month.
While Unleashed aims to present strategies regarding how to boost trade, there are other important things that will come about with the trade strategies presented in Unleashed. It’s a ripple effect and important ripples that need to be made. At this point in our history, it’s ridiculous that there are still people without reliable electricity, without nearby hospitals. While I don’t wish for the entire world to be a city (because the environment is important, too), every human being should have access to services that citizens need for mundane but necessary daily functions such as clean water, electricity, and good roads.
With the message of Unleashed, I truly believe it can happen for all of Africa. It’s what made me want to be involved with this project in the first place. Ebola was an international health crisis that could happen again and could be much worse if countries like Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone are not able to implement strategies to fix their economies and broken infrastructure. Once more stability is introduced, healthy trade agreements created, natural resources used efficiently, and goods exported, ideally citizens will benefit from high employment and better standards of living in a healthy economy. But other countries can’t do it for African countries. The nations need to do it themselves and show the world what power they hold, what power can be unleashed to build up the whole of Africa, one country at a time, to be the power house the continent can be in the world.
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