The age-old sharing economies of Africa — and why we should scale them | Robert Neuwirth

From rides to homes and beyond, we're sharing everything these days, with the help of digital tools. But as modern and high-tech as the sharing economy seems, it's been alive in Africa for centuries, according to author Robert Neuwirth. He shares fascinating examples — like apprenticeships that work like locally generated venture capital and systems for allocating scarce water — and says that if we can propagate and scale these models, they could help communities thrive from the bottom up.

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53 Comments on The age-old sharing economies of Africa — and why we should scale them | Robert Neuwirth

    • El Chévere That’s why I’m here, to laugh at this guy try to describe communism as carefully as he can without actually saying the word communism. He did OK! Haha.

    • Stinky McCheese There is a reason this is not the dominant System. It is not scalable. It is not able to win against the alternatives. Capitalism is the reason europe became dominant. It was not the Kings, it was the merchants, Entepeneurs and Corporations of England, France and the Netherlands. To an extend Guilds and Manufacturers. The closed local shared economy looses. You don’t have to Look to Africa for that. Look at Japan, China and the european states which had all similar systems. The choises were adopt an open competitive system or loose. That means you loose in production against all others, which means you loose the wars, then markets, your future, your culture.

    • Winston Ok, thanks for providing the background to your earlier comment.

      I’m not so sure about the “hundreds of millions of years” bit. But a bit of hyperbole is understandable.

    • Brenda Rua no worries, glad to, and they actually can trace it back to lobsters 300 million years ago (according to Peterson)

    • Winston Robson Could you please link to somewhere that has that explanation for the lobsters? It not only seems impossible to prove, but also utterly inapplicable to sentient beings…

  1. If Africa is such a great economical model, how come no country there is a world leader in anything impressively good yet? (do correct me if I’m wrong but bring proof too when you do, ty)

    • KTSamurai1 – funny that. India had 300 years of colonialism, and western meddling… Now India has its own aerospace and car industries, and a space programme. Oh, and have made their own thermonuclear missiles.

    • and crippling poverty

      and one of the most corrupt governments in an advancing country

      western meddling propped up a very few and caused famines that killed tens of millions

    • KTSamurai1
      So if the African model is highly susceptible to colonialism then it is not worth a try.

      We need an economy that is self-efficient, aggressive and stable. The African model obviously lacked that and got colonized. Mind you, Africa had much more raw materials than Europe and could’ve easily taken Eruope’s place. They just did nothing with that wealth. So Europe relieved them of their resources so that they could use them to conquer the world.

      Not saying that is good. But we’re in this to survive not to play around. During the Muslim and Mongolian Invasion Europe learned that it is either conquer or get conquered.

    • They aren’t holding up the current broad system as a example, they are showing that older cultural systems such as Igbo apprenticeships create more entrepreneurs and greater economic growth than a pure market economy.

  2. If this was scalable it would have already been done. It would have been done in africa and spread.
    It’s organic, organic things go to where the equilibrium is.

  3. The amount of innovation coming out of Africa this century will surprise many. There are less intrenched corporate dinosaurs in Africa than any other part of the globe. For example the idea of mobile payment systems was first conceived in Kenya, years before Apple Pay or Google Pay ever took place in the West. I would not be surprised if some part of the continent is becomes the financial center of the world by 2100.

    • Good luck, because decades before then AI will have completely taken over economy if not everything in the world. Unless they are the leaders of AI research, development, and production they will not end up being a powerhouse in anything by 2100.

    • How naive. The worst place economically or the one among the worst ones in the world will become the financial centre of the world…Lmao.

  4. I know many Africans, and from what I have seen, the only reason African countries are growing economically is due to immigrants sending portions of their wages back to their families in Africa through Western Union and Moneygram.
    Perhaps foreign investment from China has helped a bit, but growth in Africa is pretty much entirely fueled by money transfers and stolen credit card information.

    • Don’t forget the abundance of Nigerian Princes who need your help to transfer one million five hundred thousand U.S. currency dollar to a bank account.

  5. A great economic model if you want innovation (and society in general) to stagnate and eventually come to a halt entirely

  6. Geez, dude is so far off in the cabbage. Where to even begin. Masters are REQUIRED to setup apprentices with their own businesses, and he calls this this “locally generated venture capital”.

  7. I agree that not only should this be the future of the American economy but that it’s already heading in that direction. Companies like uber, lyft, airbnb, and the various crowd funding platforms show that the public is getting more comfortable with sharing our resources, as opposed to everyone own everything they need. Which i think is good for our society and the environment.

    I’ve also seen stories of pooled healthcare funds without going through insurance agencies. I’m all for it. Especially as growing distrust of the government mounts, taking responsibility away from the government and into the hands of the people is the future.

  8. I just tried a thought experiment to imagine Adam Smith on Mars.

    The John Carter movie still bombed at the box office.

  9. In short, “Africans invented rationing.”

    And, “What if we used socialist systems like the Africans have?”

    I don’t even know where to begin. The bias is palpable in his every word and his whole “compassionate Capitalism” sounds like a sham. He brings up buzz-phrases like “the Military-Industrial Complex” that ultimately mean nothing in this context.

    In short, he wants us to model our countries off of the poorest, most corrupt countries in the world. No thanks.

    • loveitorhateit127 he’s promoting mentorship. That’s what I got from it. The top is supposed to do as the bottom is to increase social mobility and hence reduce wealth disparity.

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