The Lessons of Civilisation: Why Even the Most Advanced Societies Can Lose Everything — And What Africa Must Learn From China’s Rise
BY: OMOLAJA MAKINEE
History is replete with powerful civilisations that once stood at the summit of human achievement only to fade or collapse entirely. The civilisation of ancient Kemet is among the most striking examples: a society that developed highly advanced mathematics, engineering, astronomy, medicine, art, and State organisation; yet lost its foundational autonomy through conquest, assimilation, and structural collapse.
The lesson of ancient Kemet is stark: technological or cultural brilliance does not alone secure continuity, autonomy, or self-determination. Civilisations thrive when their knowledge systems are protected, adapted, passed on, and embedded within durable social and governing architectures.
This insight helps us understand contrasting trajectories in world history — from Kemet to Greece, from Europe’s industrial revolution to China’s rapid technological ascendancy.
1. From Kemet to Greece to Europe: Knowledge Transfer and Appropriation
In the ancient world, Greek philosophers openly acknowledged their debt to Kemetian sources. Herodotus, often called “the father of history,” documented kemetian wisdom, and scholars like Plato and Pythagoras were said to have journeyed to Kemet to study. Kemetian knowledge of geometry, astronomy, and Statecraft informed early Greek thought.
Yet the Greek engagement with Kemetian knowledge was not a simple borrowing. Much like later transfers of technology, it involved selective appropriation, abstraction, and, ultimately, reinterpretation.
The rise of European civilisation was influenced, in turn, by a long chain of transmissions:
- Greek philosophical and mathematical foundations;
- Preservation and expansion of those texts by Islamic scholars during the medieval period;
- Reintroduction to Europe in translations that helped fuel the Renaissance;
- Technological development during the Industrial Revolution.
By the time Europe industrialised, the knowledge no longer belonged to any one ancient source; it had been transformed, systematised, and woven into new institutional, political and economic arrangements. But the original roots — including powerful Kemetian science and engineering — were largely forgotten or obscured.
2. How Did China Learn So Quickly? The Structural Strategy
The recent rise of China as a global manufacturing and technological powerhouse is one of the most studied economic transformations of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. There were recorded apprenticeship through industrial production, but the reality includes several layers:
A. Strategic Integration Into Global Production Networks
China’s transformation took another giant step in earnest in the late 1970s with Deng Xiaoping’s reforms. Rather than shutting itself off, China strategically opened its economy in special economic zones (SEZs) — Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and others — inviting foreign direct investment and global corporations to set up manufacturing operations.
These were not simply “cheap labour zones.” They were places where:
- Global firms transferred technology as part of contractual production agreements;
- Chinese engineers and technicians worked alongside foreign experts and learned modern industrial practices;
- Local universities and technical institutes produced vast numbers of engineers ready to absorb and build on this embodied knowledge.
China did not merely copy products; it absorbed production systems, quality control, logistics, and supply-chain integration — the very backbone of industrial civilisation.
B. Mass Education and Technical Training
China’s education policy invested heavily in STEM fields decades before its export surge. As a result, today it has:
- The largest engineering workforce in the world, by a substantial margin;
- Massive infrastructure in graduate-level research and development;
- Institutions capable of advanced design and innovation, not merely assembly.
China’s strategy was not to imitate for 5–8 years and stop — it was to systematically upskill a generation of scientists and engineers who could innovate locally once the infrastructural base was in place.
C. Incremental Technological Upgrading
China did not rely purely on reverse-engineering consumer products. It also:
- Invested heavily in telecommunications infrastructure;
- Built State-supported technological platforms for everything from AI to space exploration;
- Developed large domestic markets that allowed local firms to scale before competing globally.
In contrast to quick imitation alone, China’s model has been continuous upgrading, from contract manufacturing to owning global brands.
3. Why Africa Has Lagged: Structural, Not Civilisational Deficiency
It would be simple — and wrong — to say Africa is behind.” This is an ideological, not historical, explanation. Africa’s challenges are structural, rooted in centuries of dislocation, exploitation, and the imposition of systems that were never endogenous to African civilisational evolution.
Consider the key factors:
A. Colonial Disruption of Indigenous Economies
Colonialism systematically dismantled local production, trade networks, and indigenous knowledge systems as part of a strategy of resource extraction. Instead of building African enterprise zones, colonial authorities suppressed local industries in favour of metropolitan industry.
B. Republican State Forms Imposed
Africa’s republican States were inherited from colonial powers — centralised, bureaucratic, and dependent on external capital flows. These systems were ill-suited to build endogenous industrial capacity.
C. Dependency on Extractive Economies
Commodity export economies do not generate the circuits of innovation and production necessary for technological self-sufficiency.
Yet, African economies heavily rely on commodity exports, dominated by oil and gas (Nigeria, Angola, Algeria), minerals and metals (South Africa exports platinum, gold; DRC exports cobalt; Zambia exports copper; Ghana exports gold; Botswana exports diamonds), and agricultural products (cocoa, coffee, tea, cotton, oilseeds) from countries like Ethiopia, Côte d’Ivoire, and Mali, with many of them depending on these raw materials for the vast majority of their export revenue.
Many African economies remain highly dependent on these raw material exports, making them vulnerable to global price fluctuations and economies destined for low purchasing power in the global market.
4. What Africa Needs: A Self-Reproducing Technological Economy
China’s success holds lessons, but not in the naïve form of simple imitation. The key lessons are:
Lesson One: Strategic Integration and Learning
Africa can open production in ways that attract technology, but it must do so on its own terms — through strategic partnerships that prioritise learning, capability building, and institutional development rather than transient assembly-line jobs.
Lesson Two: Mass Technical Education
African nations must massively invest in:
- Engineering education.
- Manufacturing sciences.
- Research and development.
- Innovation incubation.
This is not optional — it is foundational.
Lesson Three: Industrial Master-Franchising
This Manifesto’s proposal — that Africans master-franchise Chinese manufacturing industries — is not about replacing African industry with Chinese firms. Rather, it suggests:
- Africans licencing proven industrial systems,
- Building them domestically,
- Using Chinese industrial know-how as a launch platform,
- Progressively owning and evolving the technology themselves.
Lesson Four: Non-Monetary Resource-Based Economy
In the context of ethnosocialism, the goal is not selling African labour or commodities globally for survival. It is self-reproduction — producing what Africa needs internally, for Africans, without dependence on global capital markets.
A robust manufacturing base aligned with a resource-based quota system can ensure:
- Sustainable industrial capacity.
- Localised innovation ecosystems.
- Trade relationships shaped by mutual benefit and technological exchange rather than extraction.
5. Globalisation: Assimilation Without Replacement
China’s strategy did not ask the world to adopt Chinese systems wholesale. It assimilated global technologies into China’s own political economy. This is the key difference between:
- Replacement models (where local systems are obliterated and overwritten).
- Assimilation models (where external knowledge is incorporated into indigenous formations).
Africans can learn from China’s success not by replacing African civilisation with Chinese capitalism, but by assimilating technological knowledge into African civilisational logic — one that prioritises communal participation, moral economy, and self-sufficiency.
Conclusion: Africa’s Civilisational Reboot
The lesson of ancient Kemet — that even the most advanced civilisation can lose everything — must shape Africa’s contemporary strategy. Technological brilliance without structural resilience becomes vulnerability.
China’s rapid ascent was not accidental; it was strategic, systematic, and grounded in its own civilisational autonomy. Africa does not need to replicate China’s political system. It needs to replicate China’s commitment to systemic capability building while anchoring it in Africa’s own ethnopublic trajectory.
If Africans can humble themselves, embrace targeted learning partnerships, build internal technical capacity, and embed this within their own cultural logic, then technological self-sufficiency is not only possible — it is an imperative.
Africa must unite. Africa must learn. Africa must build. Not as copycats, but as civilisational inheritors with the capacity to self-produce, self-govern, and shape a future that does not require selling itself short.
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