Happy Half Century ?

This year is my 50^th birthday, and I have been gathering other 50 year facts to see what has happened in my life, and how it could affect my future.

17 African nations celebrate their 50^th anniversaries of freedom from the yolk of Colonialism this year. The Cold war was fought for the most part on this continent, mainly for the mineral wealth under their mountains. Aid began in earnest in the 1970’s, and it is the children of this time that are now mature adults looking to lead their nations. While we in the West are about to enjoy an inverse pyramid of population, with more people collecting our own version of lifelong aid, Africa is bottom heavy with youth. – hundreds of millions of them are under the age of 30, on a continent wealthy beyond dreams in mineral wealth on a continent where you could drop the western nations, and emerging economies, and lose them with room to spare.

Meanwhile, China and India (Two nations that haven’t been fighting endless wars for half a century) are now proving to us that they are more than simply ‘worker farms’. They are now taking industrial and management techniques to a whole new way of doing business. They have taken mass production to a while new level: $2000 Cars, $300 computers, and $30 cell phones. 40% of the World’s growth are going to come from these two nations over the next few years. Who is leading them? Not us. 5 million Chinese and 3 Million Indians graduate from their universities every year. 75,000 of these Chinese degree holders are in Computer science or engineering, and 60,000 in India.

Emerging markets share of global GDP increased from 36% to 45% in 30 years, and will be over 50% in les than 5 more, and they are outspending Americans. In the last quarter of 2009, Thailand grew at 15%, and Taiwan at 18%. Chinese and Indian companies are buying Western businesses and names: Tata industries in India own the names of Land Rover and Jaguar. Productivity rose in China last year by 8.2% The US grew by 1%, and the UK dropped by almost 3%.

These markets are now stretching what the Japanese taught the US about auto construction in the 1970’s further. After all, they weren’t going to stay as serfs for very long. That’s why they taught the Koreans to do the ‘grunt’ labour, and now look at what Kia has become. When these emerging economies finally ‘emerge’, the African nations are ready, willing and able to overcome their last 50 years and join in with the rest of the World.

Co-incidentally, it is also the 50^th anniversary of The Pill being given the green light by the FDA, over here. In these contexts, it appears that we have been doing our best to stop producing, cut the amount of children there are around, and funding massive war machines. What a waste of half a century.