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Discuss the manufacturing industries in Africa

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The term “manufacture” generally involves the conversion of resource materials into
either chemical or physical for utilization purposes to humanities.
Manufacturing performs three functions as follows:

1. Processing
2. Assembly
3. Repair

First functions serve to distinguish between Agriculture and industry. Secondly
manufacturing differs from Agriculture in that the latter is a real activity, while the former is a punctiform i.e. manufacturing has a point location and thus demands far less land per employee than is the case in Agriculture. More often than not the locations are usually urban based.

Industries fall into four main categories as indicated below:

(i) Primary industries – these deal with the extraction of raw materials directly from
the earth or sea. Example are farming, fishing forestry and mining.
(ii) Secondary industries- these process and manufacture primary products. Local
examples include crude oil refining, food processing, Tobacco Curing, vehicle
assembly, cement etc.
(iii) Tertiary industries- provides a service; these include health education tourism trade
and transport.
(iv) Quaternary industries- provide information and expertise, these include the new
microchip and micro-electronic industries.

Some resource materials or types meant for manufacturing such as; agriculture, fishing,
forestry and mining products are in most cases not directly consumable; various degrees of
processing are required to meet human needs of these products. Thus manufacturing industry is
concerned with the changing of materials from raw into consumable form. In this respect inputs
to the manufacturing unit arrive from agriculture or mining and the outputs depart to families or similar consumers. Some manufacturing however uses already manufactured products as the
inputs, assembles them, or generally increases their usefulness and subsequently sells the new
product to their either another manufacturer or to the final consumer. Manufactured goods are
more useful and valuable than the original raw materials from which they are made. For example
timber is converted into furniture, construction materials, pulp and paper.

A 1/4 of Africa is covered by forests, but timber is less valued except for local fuel
consumption. Gabon for example is a major producer of okuome- a wood used in making
plywood, cote devoir, Liberia (just before the civil war) Ghana Nigeria etc are known as major
exporters of hard woods fishing is concentrated in inland lakes of the rift valley especially in the eastern part of Africa including other lakes where the increasing numbers of fish farms are found. In the oceans fishing is wide spread.

But in South Africa Mauritania, Mozambique, Namibia and off morocco fishing is
commercially significant even for other nations outside Africa.

Titany answered the question on January 18, 2022 at 05:54

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