Joe Studwell

But elsewhere, there are no schools until the 50s.

And so in 1960, Africa comes into the independence era with a literacy rate of 16.16% and a female literacy rate of 5%.

And this makes, you know, modern economic activity really close to impossible.

And African governments put huge resources into opening schools after 1960.

And the World Bank in the 70s did a review of what had been done and said nowhere in the world has built education systems as fast as Africa.

I mean, it's genuinely extraordinary what has been done.

achieved here.

You know, if you take a single country example, I mean, someone like Julius Nyerere running Tanzania after independence, he inherited a country with a literacy rate of 15%.

And by the mid 80s, literacy was up to over 80%.

So all that has been very important.

And without that educational progress, I don't think that the thickening of populations would be producing the pickup and growth that we've been seeing since the turn of the century.

Well, I think you've got to sort of add that there's the other bit of agriculture, the manufacturing end of agriculture, which we always forget about because we always think agriculture is about farmers.

But of course, once you've produced the crops, then the crops have got to be milled.

They've got to be turned into processed foods.

There has been a colossal boom in processed foods in Africa, all across Africa in the last 25 years.

Most Africans now eat African-produced food.

processed foods, and they're very local to local taste.

I mean, what Nigerians eat, even in one part of Nigeria, is not what Nigerians buy in another part, and they're certainly not what they buy in different areas of Africa.

And that has meant a fantastic boom in the manufacturing end of agriculture.

And it's reckoned that around half of all the capital expenditure in manufacturing in Africa at the moment is going on