Mutumwa Mawere

Knowledge gaps do exist not only in Africa but also in rest of the human family and, therefore, the most potent risk to progress has to be ignorance.

As a founding member of Africa Heritage Society www.africaheritage.com or http://www.facebook.com/AfricaHeritageSociety a member based not-for-profit organization headquartered in South Africa, I was acutely conscious that an enduring contribution to the African cause had to be focused on bridging the knowledge, capital and execution gaps that confront us.

For a continent challenged by its past and ignorance, the future can never be secure if the people with more to lose choose to be silent while those with nothing to lose dominant the conversation of the day.

Knowledge that is not shared is sterile and of no benefit to others. Our individual journeys of life arm us with experiences that when shared can help advance our collective desire to elevate Africa's standing in the value chain of human progress.

As a student, my views on capital were shaped by what I understood to be the evils of the colonial order.

I understood that to the extent that the group or class of people who had unfettered access to capital in the colonial order was principally white and the law was on their side, there was a relationship between capital accumulation and race in Africa.

My understanding then was that there was a causal link between race and capital accumulation.

In my worldview, I could never imagine myself 29 years after the advent of independence to hold a different view on capital and capitalism to the extent that capitalists can be defined as a group or class of people with access to capital.

In my youth, I can safely say that I was strongly persuaded that human progress could only be sustainable under a communist/socialist environment.

I was privileged as a student leader to visit some of the key socialist states and on each visit came new knowledge about the shortcomings of an ideology that premises human progress on decisions and choices of state actors.

As one would expect, I also began to critically question my own assumptions about the link between capital and human progress.

With my involvement in business, I have also come to appreciate that my name is often discussed in my absence and conclusions drawn about my character without being afforded any opportunity to respond.

Although death is inevitable, each time one exits questions naturally arise as to the reasons why, for instance, one has to die in the form and manner it occurs.

Equally, people want to know rightly or wrongly the reasons why one would scale the opportunity ladder and why others remain in the valley.

As part of my small contribution to the heritage of Africa, I decided to contribute to the conversation on the nation building enterprise in the form of a series of twenty articles that attempt to extend the current limits of knowledge that informs many of African conversations on social, political and economic change.

The envelope that houses our experiences and knowledge on capital and its link has been largely shaped by Africa's colonial legacy and more importantly by our own ignorance.

I am not excluded in the pool of ignorant Africans, as my own upbringing did not prepare me for the kind of experiences; that I have gone through and challenges still to confront.

What is capital? Capital is an extremely vague term whose specific definition depends on the context in which it is used.

In general, it refers to financial resources available for use after all liabilities have been deducted.

Financial assets or the financial value of assets such as cash, the land and buildings, machinery and equipment owned by a business would ordinarily fall into the category of capital.

Africa is well endowed with natural resources. The land, minerals, and other resources that are hosted on the African soil in theory belong to the people of Africa.

In defining people of Africa, there is a tendency to restrict the definition to only black people who are in the majority forgetting that the concept of citizenship should be inclusive.

Land on its own cannot be converted into cash unless capital and labor are applied to it.
Equally, minerals that remain hidden in Africa's belly are of no use to anyone unless they are exploited.

The capital required to convert Africa's resource endowment into goods and services that can be exchanged in a market system is generally not available in the continent.

To a commercial farmer, the crop belongs to all the service providers but to a subsistence farmer, for example, the crop belongs to the farmer.

More importantly, land to a commercial farmer is no different to a factory or a platform to convert a seed into a crop that can then be converted into cash.

I used to think that rich people are harmful to the poor. However, there is no rich person who can accumulate wealth without providing goods and services to willing consumers.
The first rich person could not have become rich without hard work.

The African stomachs and appetites need to be fed and anyone who can produce the food required could be rich through conversion of physical goods into cash that is then deployed to produce more goods that are then sold in the market.

How can the capital gap be bridged in contemporary Africa? The majority of the consumers in Africa are black and yet it is not unusual that people complain about the lack of black suppliers in the chain.

The capital is in people's hands and when they choose to warehouse their cash in banks they do not trust and insure their goods with people they also do not trust then there is no one to blame than the people who make choices at the point of transaction.

The capital gap can be bridged when focus is placed on the supply chain.

Any society that is premised on unfair and unjust exchange of value will not be sustainable. For example, the human capital that Africa boasts of cannot be caged in an environment that is not free.

If a person knows that another market can pay more for his/her time, then one would expect such a person if he/her is rational to pursue the rewarding option.

We have to accept that a country is no more than an idea. If the idea were exclusionary then one would expect no dynamism.

If we define Africa as a home only for black people we must accept that we will be denying the continent of the skills, capital and other resources that may be necessary to advance its cause.

Like Jesus said if two or three people meet in my name I will be there. Equally, if two or three people meet in Africa's name, Africa will be relevant and alive only to the people who have chosen Africa as the centre of their activities.

Many of us live in Africa but our appetites are fed with products that are produced by people we choose to call non-Africans forgetting that the person who feeds you is indeed your friend.

The experience in Zimbabwe has shown that dislocating about 4,500 farmers has consequences on national progress and quality of life to the extent that even the most ardent supporters of land reform are the most vociferous advocates for the removal of sanctions.

How can Africa package its resources to advantage? Capital availability alone will not solve Africa's challenges but what is required is a plan of action.

The few European settlers who chose Africa as a home were great marketers. They managed to make Africa attractive and this encouraged migration of people.

Many of the European pioneers were not rich but their genius was in being able to tell the true African story to people with the means that then invested without themselves physically relocating to Africa.

A lot of such investments were done on trust and this allowed old money to be used as an instrument to generate new wealth.

In the case of South Africa, the most sophisticated and developed African economy, the Rand Lords were people of vision who understood that a story not properly told would never be converted into concrete and tangible outcomes.

We need new Rand Lords that we can believe in and this can only be done sustainably if we believe in ourselves.

No leader will be able to change the destiny of Africa. After all, no leader has been blessed with more than one stomach and, therefore, focus must be placed on meeting the needs of the many than waiting for leaders to do for us what they cannot do for themselves.

Income attracts tax and capital produces profit. Without income and profit the reason for the state to exist becomes irrelevant.

Our knowledge of capital, its true construction and utility in the nation building enterprise must improve so should the content and context of our conversations on what is required to lift Africa up.