Power
There is a weird notion that pops up around these parts; You hear it at street corners most mornings when less-occupied adults gather at newspaper stands to exchange chunks of hearsay.
You hear it during the day, on queue at food canteens, and bus stops. You hear it at sundown too, between orders of beer and pepper soup at joints and lounges.
Old folk tune in to NTA Network News at 9PM to find it. A similar young-at-heart audience wait an hour after, tuning to News at 10 on Channels and Arise TV.
Where is Nigeria headed ?
Nigerians, like yellow pants and Lamborghinis, can be loud and proud. Nothing unnecessarily sinister to see here - with a burgeoning population, it takes a bit more to stand out. That tends to be a bit too much anywhere else in Africa.
As with things of this sort, there is a crucial misnomer that is overcompensated beneath the bluster. Doing the most. The naked emperor beneath his shiny new clothes.
We know a group isn’t just a sum of individuals. Some qualities of it increase nonlinearly - quite often this whole piece starkly differs from its sum of parts. Like how we export crude oil, but two generations can’t seem to have figured out effective industrial capacity in refining it to get petrol and diesel.
That gap between input, and perceived outcome is what a group sat chatting about a few days ago. A couple of big heads got the bright idea (not really) to host one of those 'future leaders' sit-downs. They got the founder of Stanbic IBTC bank Nigeria to share some of his experience. Another bright spark (not really) asked what he felt of this industrial gap.
His answer was quite a breath of fresh air. He spoke of making hay while the sun shines. Look at another reality. While we seem to enjoy grumbling about the blondie that got away, what about girl next door ?
We tweet up a storm about what isn’t there, but there’s a lot going quite well for us. We have global superstars in art and entertainment that can’t be explained away due to our population. No Ethiopian musician comes to mind, and they have millions of people there too.
This soft power is a tangible export too - we export culture.
Just as almost every teen’s favorite fit is jeans, t-shirts and sneakers ; american urban exports that have been tweaked consistently to a hip-hop flavor, and now athleisure outfits from fashion houses around the world.
A fluid strategy of selling this American dream to the world goes much further than having youngins wear jeans , talk hood slang and play songs on repeat. Follow the money - Hollywood keeps grossing billions from media streams. Immigrants constantly cross oceans and deserts to study, work, and live in the land of the free, and home of the brave.
That’s the point of soft power seen in advertising- a layer of abstraction for inducing a purchasing decision just like branding physical products on a shelf. Leave your wife, and join the army - no more rivers to cross !
Long before boots hit the ground, drones take to the skies, or economic sanctions hit a target principality nowadays, they could’ve already lost a generation of thinkers who swap books and enterprise for chasing the next viral trend in endless hours of app-scrolling.
Speaking of power and strategy also comes at the right time. We are in the opening stages of election season. Hollywood award season just ended, and high-level / political pursuits of that industry are now hot topics.
Remember that soft power isn't tangible without business layers; trade agreements and technology transfer. Think of iTunes; widely-used product, with a business layer of revenue sharing contracts with recording companies and record labels.
Think of Rihanna - globally recognized artiste, with business layers of revenue sharing contracts with cosmetics manufacturers and fashion collabs. Think Kanye, JayZ...you get it now.
Superstars are hot tickets. There are more levels to that influence, beyond an individual or even their management company. There is a marked difference between a trending artiste, a record label with established distribution channels, and an industry of professionals trading with the world.
The 'industrial gap' is printed as follows; between consumption and potential for production there is a gap. But this misnomer follows from measuring two kinds of activity in a mix and match ; what is real and Imaginary. Consumption is real, with organic revenue; production potential is not. Imports are real, also with organic revenue.
Then there is the imaginary. Remember that weird notion from 5 minutes ago ? Oh look again - It's all grown now.
Where Nigeria should be heading
There are oil deposits, so we should be refining petrochemicals. Cut and paste your favorite market vertical here.
But...speaking of what should be is vapid.
In these abstraction and ascription exercises, trade is happening elsewhere. While wringing hands and calculating potential, horses have bolted from the stable.
There is a surfeit of interesting things to write about. The world has enough armchair critics. Change involves improving on what is; tweaking or wholesale replacement.
Creating factories was a good suggestion 30 years ago for Asian Tigers that grew trade revenues, transferring skills and lifting millions out of poverty.
What to do now ? Boring effective factories or rave, sing and dance ?
Stick to strategy.
The notion of expanding artistic fanbase as a supposed alternative to industrial prowess is stuff for great tea-break gist by 'future leaders', but definitely not policy. Speaking of cultural influence as an alternative route to global relevance without trade dominance betrays a crucial misunderstanding of economic development, geopolitics, or history for that matter.
Let's take them in order.
From basic science, the factors of production are land, labour, capital.
An idea can only be developed into a complex solution by consultants skilled human entities. The 'industry' of such skills is known as education. It follows that miseducation across any length of time, or degree of extent, puts every factor at risk of mismanagement , especially the mind that could create such ideas.
Until there is a decent level of skill, technology can not be adapted to solve new or existing problems at any level. A dearth in transferred expertise will grossly affect structured production, or even unstructured bursts of creativity.
What follows is middling exports, global trade irrelevance and weakened financial competitiveness.
Sounds familiar ?
It appears knowledge really is power after all.
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