ECONOMIC MODELS
TRUDI MAKHAYA: Africa’s concept of sharing has role to play in global future
‘If an alien visited Earth, she might be forgiven for thinking that Uber and Airbnb were invented by Africans’
The future is African. I do not mean this in the condescending "world’s last frontier" sense. I am talking about the possibilities of an African sensibility shaping the way humanity builds the economic models and institutions of the future in response to challenges such as global warming, as well as opportunities presented by technology. Across the continent, one finds cultures that are rich in concepts that guide the management of shared resources. These systems may have been weakened by colonialism and its aftermath, but they persist in formations such as rotating savings schemes. Looking closer to home, the stokvel is a manifestation of this age-old practice of pooling resources to help individuals and families achieve their economic goals. One might argue that such concepts are not uniquely African, but the point is that robust forms of collaboration have emerged on the continent.Another South African concept, letsema, informs how to advance a key input, labour, to production be...
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