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Comment by josephpmay | Hacker News Reader

1) For anyone wondering, yes, many of these companies would have the same (or worse) problems if they tried to manufacture in the US. Our domestic supply chains for a lot of industries have dried up (or never developed). US factories also usually have higher minimum quantities and take much longer to tool up.

2) I'm surprised the article didn't mention Africa at all. A lot of Chinese industrialists are investing in Africa, and I suspect that Chinese-style supply chains have a good chance of developing there. If I was looking for a country to for long-term manufacturing strategies right now, I'd be taking a hard look at African countries.

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Our domestic supply chains for a lot of industries have dried up (or never developed).

You make it sound like supply chains are permanent, immutable things that can't be created and dismantled at will. It happens all the time.

Yes, there are countries where an existing supply chain is an advantage. But those supply chains weren't always there. They were created when manufacturing demand arrived. The same thing can happen in the United States, Canada, Europe, Brazil, or pretty much any other company.

It's happened before. It'll happen again.

If I was looking for a country to for long-term manufacturing strategies right now, I'd be taking a hard look at African countries.

Agreed. I read/heard somewhere the notion that Africa is tired of making plastic shoes for China, and wants to start moving toward electronics. Considering the labor availability, sea access, and mineral wealth available, I could see that happening.

The "natural" distribution of manufacturing capacity roughly mirrors the population distribution, and Africa is definitely under-provisioned in this respect.

Respect for property rights and political stability is definitely a downside, though. The first industrialists that manage to build out after the last land war or socio-political upheaval are going to get some really nice returns, though.

The underdevelopment of Africa is/was a deliberate decision of the west that China is undoing.

Smart investors realize China/India's future economic status depends on being able to offset loss of western demand/trade with direct trade with African markets.

This is generally better for the whole planet but not if you have a "zero-sum game" mentality (seems more common in the West than East).

The decisions made by roughly 1800 C.E. industrialists to concentrate development in Northern Europe and the United States can be made on a purely geographic basis. African rivers are generally not navigable to the sea, and to this day the cheapest way of transporting goods is to barge it down the river. The US, on the other hand, has the most extensive network of navigable rivers, with the Mississippi and the connections made to various smaller rivers on the Eastern Seaboard via Chicago, the Great Lakes, and the Hudson.

The problem there is the plural in "countries": there's no obvious one place to invest, and cross-border trade is limited by borders, tariffs and terrible infrastructure.

- South Africa is the richest/most advanced on most metrics, but it's also wracked by crime and labor unrest, and set for continuing major political unrest.

- Nigeria is huge and growing, but corrupt to the point of making legitimate business near-impossible.

- Ethiopia is run by a Communist junta whose commitment to reform is questionable at best.

- Rwanda likes to think they're the next Singapore, but they're tiny, landlocked and in a really bad neighborhood.

Nigeria is corrupt but over the past few years, the country has seen a lot investments from Chinese industrialist. Usually small and medium sized one trying to get ahead of the curve. I believe the Chinese can deal with the local corruption in Nigeria. Maybe even thrive in it in the short term

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