ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVE by ‘Tunde Olatunji

MINERAL RESOURCES and ECONOMIC PROSPERITY.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), fomerly known as Zaire, is one of the ten (10) richest countries in the world in terms of mineral resources.

The country’s mineral resources is estimated to worth more than 24 trillion US Dollars. This includes the world’s largest reserves of cobalt and coltan, which is majorly used to produce capacitors for mobile phones, computers, cameras and other electronics.

Ironically, this same country is also on the list of the ten (10) poorest countries in the world with a meager GDP per Capita of 561.8 US Dollars and one of the least developed countries as well.

The economy of DRC currently below 50billion US Dollars, is less than half the size of Lagos State’s economy.

According to the world bank’s most recent data of 2018, the GDP of the United State of America is valued at 20.54 trillion US Dollars.That is to say, the mineral resources in one of Africa’s country (DRC) alone worths more than the GDP of the entire United States of America today.

MY SUBMISSION
In today’s world, economic prosperity of nations are not just by mere presence or abundance of mineral resources, not even oil and gas. Human brains remain the greatest natural resources and when they are well developed and harnessed to the fullest, nations begin to flourish. Therefore, our greatest asset is not in crude oil, cocoa, groundnut, etc, but the people and their productive capacity powered by a creative and visionary leadership.

N.B: In my subquent write ups on Economic Perspective ,I will be running a series on countries without any tangible mineral resources that are great and prosperous.

‘Tunde Olatunji
Office of the Chief Whip
Osun State House of Assembly
www.tundeolatunji.com

Teacher | Finance & Economic Expert | Public Servant