US problems diminish, but Africa’s won’t go away.
21 April 2008
The recession that refuses to bite, the arms trade that hasn’t delivered, and environmental actions to back up the fine words. That’s a lot to be getting on with for one week, so where to start….
I’ll start with a very pleasant evening I had with Susan Mucha, EMTww’s American correspondent, on the eve of APEX. In the surreal environment of a pyramid in the Nevada desert, we discussed, with some apprehension, what the forthcoming week would tell us about the state of the industry. Given that APEX reflects North American industry rather than the a full global perspective, and given that this was at the height of the bad news stories emanating from the US financial sector, we were agreed that there may be a few long faces at the exhibition. But to our surprise, the visitors came, with money in their pockets, and so both they and the exhibitors were happy. So where is this recession? In her column this week (What recession?), Susan looks back at this phenomenon and examines why the recession seems to be passing large segments of the electronics industry intact.
On a completely unrelated topic, I would like to go back to last summer to a leader I wrote called ‘Arms trade is no defence’. In terms of reader response, this article attracted both the highest quantity and the most vociferous (all of which are much appreciated), mainly criticising my wishy-washy liberal views on the subject.
The biggest base of this criticism came from my home turf in the UK, where the aerospace/defence sector of the electronics industry has been one of our success stories, not just for some of the big contractors but also for many sub-contractors further down the supply chain. With the loss of high volume electronics manufacture from the UK, and most other Western countries, this kind of diversification and specialisation has become key factors in survival and success of indigenous electronics industries.
However, at the end of last week was a news story that demonstrated, far more eloquently then I can, the message that I was trying to get across. The Union representing dockers in Durban, South Africa refused a cargo of weaponry to be unloaded from a Chinese ship. The cargo was destined for Zimbabwe. Now while the South African government has pulled back from taking positive action against Mugabe’s discredited, violent and unelected government, the action of these dockers will directly save numerous lives of their fellow Africans just across the border.
I really don’t think it is stretching the imagination too far to predict that Mugabe intended to defend his regime with force having failed with the ballot box, although to compare the possible consequences with the genocide in Rwanda is probably, I hope, going a step or two too far. But however many guns and bullets you get in 77 tonnes (the amount in the Chinese consignment) it is probably enough to help Mugabe retain control, with all the bloodshed and heartache that would involve. This really is a case when it was clear that certain weapons would be used by certain people on certain victims, and the action of the dockers has, if not prevented that, then certainly helped minimise it. It might even have sent the Zimbabwe government a more powerful message than the rest of the international community seems able to do at the moment. So I applaud the South African dockers, and stand firm in my wishy-washy liberalism and belief that the arms trade should not be an international one.
As a final thought, this is Earth Day – a day when a projected one billion people will pat themselves on their backs and tell each other what a good job they are doing for the environment. Mostly, this seems to involve using paper bags, or at least reusing plastic bags, as this seems to be the way that people that care about the environment can best show it these days. Having saved the planet from death by plastic bag, the conscientious environmentalist can drive home in a car the size of a bus, switch on every light in the house, throw away half the lunch they have just bought but didn’t need all of, and so on. In the electronics industry we try to reduce energy consumption and have legislation to make whole new demands on us regarding the solders we use and the recycling of equipment at end of life. If anyone has gone a few stages further then it would be interesting to hear your stories – how can an electronics manufacturer go green, beyond meeting current legislation? Any thoughts you would like to share please email me at the usual address.
Happy Earth Day!
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