Establishing further ties between Africa and South America

A long term goal could be to expand direct scheduled commercial airline and ocean freight service between South American and African countries through private investors willing to establish a true global infrastructure. Help from governments is certainly useful, but our political systems are generally prone to corruption and diverted resources.

In terms of tourism and emigration, South Americans like to travel to North America and Africans like to travel to Europe. In that sociological context, promoting direct trave between Africa and South America is quite tough at this time. We should continue establishing online bonds between our people, so that eventually our fresh intercontinental market becomes big enough for transportation companies to profitably establishing direct air and sea routes. We need more convenient transportation options to develop our intercontinental tourism industry.

The borders between contiguous African and South American countries are inherited from colonial times and they continue separating kindred from each other. These intracontinental rivalries do not seem on their way to being resolved any time soon. In the mean time, we should promote a very strong bilateral relationship between South Africa and Brazil. The next two Football World Cups as well as a future Olympiad will take place in either of these countries. Africans and South Americans from across our continents should take advantage of the global rise of Brazil and South Africa, because the smaller countries might also accelerate the integration between our various local cultures through the help of the big two.

The history of slavery is far from having been exhaustively studied. It is easier nowadays to construct a person's genealogy tree through sites such as geni, myheritage and even facebook. It would be interesting that a team of Nigerian, Benin, Togo and Ivory Coast researchers teamed up with Caribbean, Colombian, Venezuelan and Brazilian counterparts with the goal of finding out their common ancestors.

The petroleum and gas industries of Venezuela and Nigeria are facing tremendous production challenges due to internal conflicts arising from our local populations. Perhaps a stronger integration among the people of our countries could divert some interest out of nationalistic subsidies back into meritocracy. Our countries are potentially rich in developing alternative sources of energy, but the legal issue of private vs. state ownership of resources remains as a significant drawback to investment, research and development.

I have not studied any of these issues in depth and I am sure there are people out there who are much more qualified than me to propose a framework for establishing further ties between our continents. The main purpose of this essay is to promote a wake up call to other Africans and South Americans to further develop our direct interaction within the context of competitive globalization.

Rubén Rivero Capriles

Caracas, November 19, 2009

http://www.riverocooper.com

Well Said! Your assessment is also thought provoking for African Americans residing in the United States. (from JoEtta)

Great, ground-breaking idea! (from Ukpai)

I hope you are aware although trade relations between Africa and Latin America needs to increase, it is already happening. Feel free to check out the petrobras and the work that they do all over africa.. please companies such as pdvsa along with grana industries, just to name a few...(from onwadike)

These is wonderful....And I applaud the initiative of creating and strengthening the ties between the South America Region and Africa.... BRAVO!!!! (from Simmy)

Thought-provoking feedback from Syed Zubair Ahmed:

"I will start with the last paragraph, in my view you could better paraphrase, that due to urgent need to develop a framework for establishing and rapport between our continents, for this purpose the national chamber of commerce in our countries could be tasked to undertake, explore and identify common areas of cooperation and development between the two continents.

1-In my view, you’ll have to reorganize your article, in the preamble of the article, you could explain the historical background of trade ties of the two continents.

2-The second important element to include is to spell out objectives of the ties. You can identify short-term and long-term objectives that need to be achieved.

3- By adopting different strategic moves in various sectors, and with government support, how the objectives spelt out could be materialized.

4- By liaising and cooperating of these big continents, how the lives of the people to be impacted, present with facts and figures how the resources could be mobilized, capacity building is possible, and the job of national and international development could be accomplished, with this synergy. For this purpose you will have make little research and gather some facts to include in your article to make it more forceful.

5- In the last, I have also spelled out different sectors that need to be explored to take the advantage of specialization, human and material resources and technological advancement.

First of all agriculture is the mainstay of the African countries, it represents a growth opportunity for technological knowledge sharing in this sector and could ultimately result in boosting exports, foreign exchange and more employment opportunities. As a result of increasing international trade, the subsidiary sectors like transportation and logistics will be expanded as more trade barriers would have to do away with.

The African governments have the cognizance of the fact that there is a larger need to liberalize their economies, taking advantage of innovation of private sector, the more subsidies and relaxation in the tax structures are pre-requisite for the business to flourish and harness the potential of inter-continental trade, thus improving the well-being and quality of the local people.

Oil exploration is also an exciting prospect, but the technical aspect of oil field service requires cooperation and building infrastructure to be able to exploit the potential of the sector. With continuing high cement prices, putting pressure on the construction industry, besides accommodation, other hospitality industries, like catering, bars and restaurants are growth areas that need to be explored.

Apparently the market looks saturated; the financial services also have potentials you are looking for. For this you will have to be specific about your niche market. The micro-finance sector has great potential in east African countries. The United Nations Capital Development Fund reported that the micro-finance industry realizes an impressive 30% return on investment, whereas the commercial banks earned 25% during the same period. Therefore, providing financial services to small business sectors remain a viable outlook. The prospects for cooperation in energy intensive industries such as manufacturing could open up areas. If energy cost could be reduced, accompanying sectors like pharmaceutical business could be expanded. Higher energy costs has in fact, effected whole economies of east African countries that need to be controlled by inducting efficient systems, knowledge sharing and technological development in these sectors."

Syed Zubair Ahmed

Yuasa Investments, Uganda