Adding value to a product – whether it is canning tomatoes, turning iron ore into steel or building cars – is difficult. In 2010, two-thirds of Africa’s total exports were oil and minerals. Economist Erik Reinert explains: “Rich countries got rich because for decades, even centuries, their states and ruling elites set up, subsidised and protected dynamic industries and services.”Ironically, the World Bank, itself set up to help poor countries get rich, got caught up in a Cold War-fuelled denial of this historical fact. In his book How Rich Countries Got Rich … and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor, Reinert says: “If you want to understand the causes of American and European prosperity, study the policies of those who created it, not the advice of their forgetful successors”. No, this is the United States (US) in 1776.