Virginia editorial: Appalachia could learn from how 'Black Panther's' Wakanda manages resources

Of course, it's a superhero fantasy film — but a Virginia newspaper ran an editorial this week noting the economics in "Black Panther" could apply in Appalachia.

In a March 3 editorial, the Roanoke Times compares Wakanda, a tiny fictional country in Africa ruled by King (and superhero alter ego) T'Challa to real-life Appalachia.

In the movie, Wakanda has a rich deposit of the magical (and fictional) mineral Vibranium.

"Wankanda has used this Vibranium to build a wealthy, technologically advanced society that it has managed to hide from the rest of the world — which still thinks of the country as a backward society of little consequence," the editorial reads.

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And then it poses a question: "Can an economy based on resource extraction really become wealthy?"

Appalachia is rich in natural resources — coal and timber among them — that have resulted in wealth mainly for companies located outside Appalachia, with no profits reinvested in workers or infrastructure, the editorial maintains.

"The fictional Wakanda has somehow created a resource extraction economy that reinvests its wealth in its own people," the editorial said. "With the demise of coal, it's too late for Appalachia to do that. Instead, the great challenge for the region now is to build a new economy that generates wealth here, not someplace else."

While it notes that Wakanda's "isolationist nation" concept — where the country magically has everything it needs to build a successful society, without foreign trade — probably wouldn't translate into the real world, it does outline two relevant lessons from the movie: Education and gender equality matter.

Wakanda's main characters are highly educated — opportunities often lacking in poorer parts of Appalachia. And Wakanda gets girls into STEM — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — fields, the editorial said: "You can't build a modern economy with only half the population."

Read the entire editorial here.