Nanotechnology, the science of tiny molecules, is advancing with potentials that can radically alter the structures of modern commerce, industry, and culture. It promises to disrupt global markets and transform industries through low-cost, high-efficiency, high-capacity tools, processes, and products.
A transformative technology with the ability to develop a new industrial revolution offers many national opportunities and threats. Nations with the capabilities to create or adopt and thus spread technological applications will accumulate wealth. These are innovators with knowledge-driven economies. Other nations, generally poor, lack inventive capacity with economies anchored in mineral extraction and agriculture.
Lacking knowledge and creative skills, they derive most of their export earnings from undifferentiated and widely priced commodities, raw materials and agricultural products. Ninety-five of the 141 developing countries derive at least 50 per cent of their earnings from commodity exports. In most sub-Saharan African nations, non-fuel commodities account for more than 65% of their foreign income.
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) estimates that a third of the world’s population, around two billion people, is employed in the production of basic products.
In most commodity-dependent countries, scientific innovation and adoption capacities are lacking. In other words, the poor state of their science and technology skills may prevent them from using advances in nanotechnology to improve production efficiency, deliver higher-value products, design processes that require labor, capital, energy, land, and materials. modest.
Having consistently failed to effectively adopt new technologies, from steam engines to microelectronics, with perennially low scores on major development, technology and innovation indices, the adoption of nanotechnology will not be any easier for developing economies. If nothing else, quantum mechanical nanotechnology will be more difficult to acquire than many earlier ones that relied primarily on classical Newtonian physics with much lower skills and infrastructure requirements.
Potential success in downstream nanotechnology, marketing and distribution cannot happen without a skilled workforce that understands the technology and can contribute to the upstream creative stage. At least in the short term, many less developed nations may not take advantage of the potential technological benefits of nanotechnology to promote and differentiate commodities in the international marketplace.
Despite the problems in developing nations, advanced economies will continue to pursue innovation in nanotechnology. There is potential for new nanomaterials to become good alternatives for many existing commodities (e.g. rubber, copper, cotton, platinum, etc.), and gradually commodity markets and industries could be affected or even disappear.
The implication is massive trade and unemployment dislocations that could pose serious security implications in commodity-dependent nations. If nanotechnology offers efficient means of creating quality, long-lasting, and affordable energy sources like batteries, nations dependent on the export of fuel commodities like crude oil will suffer devastating economic impacts. A nation like Nigeria, which derives more than 85% of its foreign income from crude oil, could experience riots and banditry in its cities by displaced workers.
As nanotechnology disrupts global market structures and displaces commodities, sub-Saharan Africa could experience major crises fueled by job losses and reduced incomes. The lack of capacity to make the transition to new industries or markets will cause these crises to be prolonged with effects that will affect their political and economic stability. The world will potentially see nano-conflict clusters in African cities and towns when mining and extraction offer little economic value, unless Africa develops a knowledge strategy and transforms itself into a knowledge power.