ALTHOUGH it is worthy to celebrate the opening of new mines in the country, Zimbabwe has normalised being a minor participant in both the extraction and utilisation of its resources into end products.
This is because most of the mines are foreign-owned and the mineral resources are mostly exported in their raw form, so that they are fully utilised in Asian, European and Middle-Eastern nations.
These minerals, such as coal, gold, platinum, chrome, lithium, etc, are used to produce energy for foreign power stations, jewellery, catalytic converters for motor vehicles, stainless steel, motor vehicles, mining equipment, agricultural machinery, industrial equipment, computers, television sets, cell phones, lithium batteries for power grids, etc.
In agriculture, the country's unprocessed exports such as cotton, tobacco and sugarcane are also utilised by foreign firms (mostly in more developed economies), to produce textiles, cigarettes, sophisticated food products, etc.
To be precise, since Zimbabwe does not have advanced productive capabilities, it has to export most of its foreign trade, in unprocessed form.
In other cases, the country ends up importing the commodities, which it already has, although in a more expensive form such as motor vehicles, cell phones, industrial machinery, designer clothing, etc.
It is, therefore, appropriate to state that, if the government has any ambitions to modernise the country and to uplift its population to world class standards of living, there is an urgent need to pursue the widespread local acquisition of intellectual property (sophisticated productive) capabilities.
Intellectual property (IP) refers to creative capabilities, which result in the production of sophisticated goods and services.
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It also includes the manufacturing of machinery and technology, which are used to make those goods and services.
So, in order to make software programmes, computers, cell phones, modern clothes, industrial machinery and vehicles, companies need sophisticated know-how (intellectual property).
Since it comprises the know-how to make goods and services, intellectual property is usually registered by its owners in their country of residence, so that no one can flagrantly imitate the original owner's technology (IP).
For businesses, which have multinational reach, they can register their IP in foreign countries, in addition to registering it in their home country.
That means multinational companies, such as Toyota, Mercedes Benz, Apple, Huawei, Nike, Disney, Shoprite, KFC, etc, register their IP so that their designs, logos, trademarks and copyrights are not imitated by anyone, who is not licenced by their companies to do so.
And whenever these firms licence anyone to use their IP, they typically charge a commensurate fee for that, so that they get to profit from their ideas.
It is also advisable for Zimbabwe’s political and thought leadership to begin to design strategies through which the country can develop its own companies, which have the adequate IP for the production of vehicles, aeroplanes, computer software programmes, medicines and missiles from scratch. If the country is not ready to have such ambitions, it should then expect to remain an insignificant nation.
However, once ambitions to gain local IP capabilities emerge, there will be a number of challenging issues to overcome. The Zimbabwean leadership will have to come to terms with the fact that the acquisition of local IP capabilities will be difficult to realise without embracing controversies, and taking various kinds of risks.
This also means that Zimbabwe's IP strategy does not necessarily need to be available as a public document. The acquisition of IP by the United States of America (USA), China and other countries, which will be explained below, should be adequately instructive.
How the USA acquired IP capabilities
A copyright is a protective mechanism used to protect a registered written (book, etc) or artistic work (music, movie, painting, etc), so that it is not reproduced by anyone who is not the owner, without permission (also known as licensing) from the owner.
The USA began to formalise the registration and protection of commercially-viable ideas (IP) in the year 1790, when it introduced its Copyright Act.
This law (Copyright Act of 1790) meant that a holder of a copyright on American soil would not have his/her ideas flagrantly imitated.
Thus, copyright holders in the USA could profitably exploit their ideas without fear of imitations from competitors. It is also crucial to emphasise that the Copyright Act (of 1790) did not protect any IP belonging to foreigners.
This meant that Americans could copy foreign ideas, without negative consequences. This in fact helped the USA to accelerate its modernisation, which strongly relied on copying foreign ideas (IP) for its development.
In 1814, an American businessman named Francis Cabot Lowell, even helped launch the United States’ industrial revolution by copying and adapting the British power loom (engine-powered sewing machine), which was one of the most impactful inventions of the 19th century.
After almost a century (from 1790) of copying, adapting and benefiting from foreign ideas (IP), the USA eventually introduced the Chace Act in 1891 (also known as the International Copyright Act), which went on to provide IP protections for foreign-owned ideas.
The 100 years (1790- 1891) had given the country a chance to modernise, on the back of both local and foreign IP, which it would also imitate, for no charge.
However, even after the establishment of the Chace Act, the USA went on to promote the theft of foreign-owned IP. For example, in 1917, it introduced the “Trading with the Enemy Act”, which granted a wartime exception to the Chace Act, to permit the confiscation and sale of all enemy-owned ideas to US companies.
Enemy in this case refers to the firms that were based in countries, which the USA was opposing in the war.
This theft of IP enabled the USA to pick up in productive sectors, in which it had lost competences, such as the manufacturing of various types of chemicals.
This shows that without imitation and acquisition (which also includes theft) of foreign IP, the USA would not have rapidly developed or modernised as it did. In fact, throughout history, rapidly growing middle-income economies have been known to use the acquisition of foreign IP, in order to finally achieve high-income (advanced economy) status.
Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, for example, have had a lot of brushes with Western governments, regarding the same issues of "acquisition" of foreign IP to advance their growth ambitions. This went on until the three countries, eventually reached high-income status (with GDP per capita of US$20 000-US$25 000).
How China did it
Although the USA tries to make China notorious for the theft of foreign IP (productive know-how) today, the previous paragraphs strived well to show that the “acquisition” (including theft) of foreign technologies is the path that all advanced countries used, in order to reach their high-income statuses.
From the 1970s, prominent Western firms, such as Apple, Intel, Mercedes Benz, BMW, etc, began to set up their manufacturing plants in China, in order to benefit from cheap Chinese labour. By the time the Western companies got to the 2000s, they also began to sell their goods and services to the expansive and richer Chinese market.
In order to benefit from the presence of foreign companies, the Chinese government stipulated that these companies work as joint ventures with Chinese firms, licence Chinese firms to produce their products at a fee payable to Western companies.
Due to the attractiveness of the huge Chinese market which now exceeds one billion people, foreign companies agreed to the partnerships and gave away their intricate technologies in the process. This was and is legal to this day. The close collaborations (partnerships and licensing) gave Chinese companies an access to how goods and services are produced in a modern economy.
China then developed its own productive capabilities (IP), where it could manufacture almost anything equally as good as Western companies.
Along the way, the Asian nation (China) has also been accused of using reverse engineering (disintegrating foreign products in order to copy each component) and imitation (counterfeiting).
In fact, in the late 1980s, China was considered by its opponents as the “number one IP thief”, globally.
The US still insists that, for the past decade, over 80% of the counterfeit goods (clothes, cell phones, etc), which it seizes (nationally and internationally), originate from China and Hong Kong.
The Asian nation is also accused of sponsoring “hackers” to access computer systems of prominent foreign companies in order to access their capabilities and technologies, which can be used for its modernisation goals.
These are just accusations, however, with none having been proven so far.
Today, Chinese companies are now world leaders in IP (productive capabilities) pertaining to 5G technology, biotechnology and railway equipment.
The nation is also realistically pursing global leadership in the following industrial sectors; information technology (AI), robotics, green energy, aerospace, ocean engineering, power equipment, medical devices, agricultural machinery, and new materials (which involve chemistry, physics, and metallurgy).
Conclusion
The argument made in this essay is that, Zimbabwe needs to begin to focus on how it can acquire IP so that it can be more self-reliant in advanced technologies and can modernise its economy.
It is vital for the leadership to begin working on the various ways in which the country can gain productive capabilities, which can enable it to manufacture vehicles, engines, generators, machines, pumps, automated manufacturing production lines, modern shoes and clothing, medicines, aeroplanes, missiles, etc.
In order to reach that stage, the country will need to support local companies, which purchase foreign IP, make their own generic products from foreign ones (where there are no IP protections), and form Joint Ventures with foreign firms (for the purpose of technology transfers).
This will require gradual increases in funding to local universities, and revamping the way in which they operate, since they are essential in a country's innovation ecosystem.
That also means that the country should also equally move away from all forms of propaganda, hate speech and biased data which emanates from public institutions (such as the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency, for example).
This is because such conditions do not nurture society's respect for truth and innovation. o be realistic, in its aspiration, Zimbabwe will need to work closely with its neighbour, South Africa, which has sophisticated productive capabilities in its own right.
The collaboration would enable both countries to develop self-reliance (independent of Northern and Asian economies) in modern production processes.
Once that is achieved, both countries (Zimbabwe and South Africa) can then begin to explore ways of creating their own advanced products and services (innovations), which they can also export to the rest of the world.
Tutani is a political economy analyst. — [email protected]
