The more mature a product is the closer it's cost of production trends to the material cost and the more likely the product production is to move to a cheaper labour cost location to try and boost profits



For those left behind in this migration the answer is technical differential, ie products that are based on a new technology with a correspondingly higher market price. The new technology is digital and has been for some time. Unfortunately as this product matures it's production cost will also trend to its material cost. As digital products have no material cost I leave you to determine where that leads us. As digital products will in time need a new category of products to maintain the technical differential the problem is it is not clear what that product will be. Associated with that is the fact that new tech development becomes increasingly costly to develop as the easy fruit is picked



Thus there is a problem growing for the West which historically has been the centre of development since the Industrial revolution. If there is a problem for the West then there is almost certainly a problem for location s like Africa which are the logical choice for placement of mature product production



In short the mechanism of product maturity is not understood by planners in Africa who think they can become masters of their own destiny through a moderate tech upgrade. There is a very great danger they move to pinning their flag to an animal which is on the verge of extinction



Meanwhile back in the West you will note that the service sector has become more important in economies for this very reason - which is also a measure of the difficulty of generating new technology



Why Africa or anywhere else should want to emulate this model is beyond me as it will only create more problems given time. Furthermore the profile of the declining productivity characteristic of the West is likely involved in the outcome, in fact IMO an odds on certainty

