Introduction

Industrial development in the developing countries was initiated by the industrial nations during the colonial period. Until the end of the Second World War, manufacturing remained an insignificant aspect of the economies of the developing countries. The countries of the developing world, many of them former colonial territories, saw themselves in the years after the WW2 as markedly different from the nations of Europe and North America. They were poor and less developed and therefore saw industrialisation as the only towards development.
The first minerals to be established were associated with the extraction of minerals. Examples in Africa were the copper mines and smelters of Zaire and Zambia, and the tin mines of Nigeria.
Generally as soon as cash cropping and commercial mineral production were established in the developing world, small factories had to be build to prepare their crops and minerals for export.
The industrial development which has taken place in recent decades has been very diverse in nature bur certain patterns tend to be repeated from one place of the region to another. Each of the broad types of manufacturing existing in the 1950s and 1960s has expanded, but the growth of consumer goods industries to replace imports has been especially rapid. Import substitution is major factor in industrial establishments in Africa.
Africa is not an industrial continent, having only one such region which compares in scale and scope with great industrial regions like the Ruhr, Pittsburgh and the Great Lakes or the Donetz Basin in Russia. For the rest, there are smaller s pockets of industry, intended in the main to serve the country in which they are situated.
Until recently, since World War Two perhaps, Africa's resource base was solely the land. The majority of Africa's people were and still are, pastoralists, or cultivators, or both. Values, philosophies, life styles were all rooted in the land and its varying degrees of fruitfulness.
Modern industry was for the temperate lands "where, in Britain, it was first developed in the late 1700's. The spread of industry occurred on a horizontal basis at first; along the temperate latitudes to east and west, into North America, Europe and Asia. By the 1900's it had moved, on a small scale, into the southern temperate latitudes, but still on a horizontal plane, to places like south-east Australia, the River Plate Republics and, to a lesser extent, the south coast of Africa. However also by then, a sleeping giant was beginning to stir in South Africa.
Industry can only develop on a really large scale under a very special set of circumstances. Without them, large scale development of industry is just not possible; and neither is the accumulation of great wealth which a wide industrial base inevitably brings. A glance at the great industrial countries of the world will show the circumstances under which industry can grow.
First of all there is the need for machines to make the production of life's basic needs, food, clothing, housing and movement, easier and quicker.
Secondly there were the power resources to do this which were lying in the ground: coal.
Thirdly there was the other basic raw material with which to work: iron ore. These three factors are what the development of large scale industry, both heavy and light, is all about. There are many others of course, but without at least two of the three we have outlined, great industrialization is unlikely.
A further look at some of the great industrial nations will show that the local iron ore has long since been exhausted. But that doesn't matter as the industries are established. They might expand, but they won't actually be moved. The necessary raw materials, like metalliferous ores, will just be transported in from elsewhere. As long as a satisfactory power base remains, so will the industry. Having discussed the basic requirements for large scale industrial development, and before looking at industry elsewhere in Africa, let us now look in greater detail at Africa's one great example of such development: the sleeping giant we mentioned earlier, which brings to South Africa much of her great wealth and power.