"Land of Opportunity", by Jim Rogers, Worth Magazine, April 1996.
"Africa may appear foreboding and mysterious to most westerners. But it's also a place to get rich......Now if you will indulge me, I'd
like you to examine two countries, one in the closing decades of the 19th century, the other in the closing decades of the 20th century.
Both possess substantial natural resources, including fertile soils, regular rainfall, and sizable mineral deposits. But their economies have been devastated by political instability, huge debts, government mismanagement, the corruption of state officals, civil war, and difficult relations with neighbors. During these unruly decades the leaders of both countries have been periodically assassinated.
Agriculture is the most important sector of the two nations' economies, employing over 80 percent of the workforce of each. But each government has recently acted to rehabilitate and stabilize its economy by undertaking currency reform and raising producer prices on
exports. In the past few years, both economies have turned in solid performances based on continued investing in rehabilitation of their
infrastructures, improved incentives for production exports, and gradually improved domestic security. The rest of the world, however, still sees both countries as rude and barbaric.
If at the end of the 19th century you'd emigrated to the first, you'd have come to the United States, where you had a chance to make a
tremendous fortune, as did a tidal wave of immigrants.
If today you emigrated to the second, you would be investing in Uganda. This African nation is supposed to be the worst of the worst,
the former fiefdom of the blood-drenched cannibal Idi Amin. But it is now a beacon of capitalism.
Since Idi Amin left in 1979, Uganda's exports have increased hundreds of times despite the horrible bear market in commodities during this period. This leap is just the beginning of the story." |
