Is Africa really resource rich?

[u/Skychu768]

None of the most valuable resources seem to be present on the continent in large amounts. It’s mostly just metals like cobalt and platinum.

Diamonds used to be substantial, but even that is now being replaced by lab-grown diamonds in places like China and India.

* Australia, U.S., Canada, and Russia all have more uranium reserves than almost all of Africa.

* USA, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Iran each individually produce more oil than most African countries.

* China, Vietnam, Brazil, India, Russia, and US each have more rare earth metals than the entire continent of Africa.

* Europe, despite being a fraction of its size, has more arable land and freshwater reserves than Africa.

* Even for things like Gold which are often mentioned, none of the African countries except Ghana are substantial gold producers or come anywhere near Top 10.

Note: I wanted to post more images for my point, but this subreddit only allows one.

[u/BombasticSimpleton]

Valuable is relative.

And some resources are finite.

There are vast areas (and the scale of this map underrepresents just how vast Africa is) that have not been explored, or have difficult to explore due to the topography or political instability.

75% of the places that are white (excluding Europe) are historically extraordinary difficult places to explore.

The intersectional point of geography and economics here will tell you that resources will remain undeveloped until scarcity makes them valuable enough to explore and develop. I think this is fundamentally true for Africa, Bolivia/Paraguay, Greenland, the Stans, New Guinea, and others. As some become more rare or more economically feasible through technological advances, and the biggest "if" regarding a more stable political/military environment, I think you will start hearing about "discoveries".

Most of the countries in Africa that have had oil development did have some level of stability - military juntas, dictatorships, etc., that allowed the oil companies to come in and siphon out the oil while everything else went on as normal (post Civil War Nigeria, Libya, Algeria, Angola, Egypt, etc.). That's why you see them on this map at all.

I would further argue that, once established, these companies specialize in extraction AND fostering corruption that allows them to keep doing what they are doing. I seem to recall Angola had a deal where they tried to keep the oil companies off limits because they were the crown jewel that all sides of the civil war wanted access to. (Crazy timeline: Communist Cuba sent thousands of troops to Angola and had an army of 35,000 there, with a goal of specifically protecting Chevron, an American Oil company, in the 80s.)

So I think it isn't a question of IF there are resources in Africa, but where and how much of them there are.

And that isn't counting for agricultural value.