L. Fituni, I. Abramova Resource Potential of Africa and Russia's ...

CHAPTER 2
Natural Resource Potentials of Russia and Africa:
a Comparative Analysis
2.1. Structural Analysis of the Two Natural Resource
Potentials
BASIC FEATURES OF RUSSIA’s and Africa’s resource potentials
possess significant similarities but also demonstrate numerous
differences.
The key uniting characteristics are the diversity, extraordinary
comprehensiveness and largely unexhausted capacity of the two resource
bases. Taken together these three features speak about the
uniqueness of Russia’s and Africa resource potentials. Being already
well known and quite developed mining megaspaces of global importance,
both are believed to be able to offer much higher level of
involvement into integrated productive chains of the world. As mentioned
in the first chapter, besides smaller (and consequently less
important) geographic regions of our Planet, Russia and Africa remain
the only vast geographic spaces that preserve hugely “unexhausted”
potentials of natural resources.
There is still another uniting trait: namely, the role of the natural
resource potentials in the economic development strategies of Africa
and Russia, respectively. Despite all the differences, the developmental
conceptual premises existing there preclude that revenues
from the exploitation of their natural resources may with the government’s
guidance be turned into a foundation for accelerated development
of sound diversified modern national economies. And,
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