The meaning of African growth
I saw an article the other day
headlined “ Why saying ‘ seven of the ten fastest growing economies are in Africa ‘
carries no real meaning” [1]
(By Morten Jerven writing on africanarguments.org). Not one to be put off by such one eyed perspectives –
I thought I should read it.
Always get the ‘other ‘ perspective is what I believe and advocate, and so I did.
What followed was a clinical analysis of GDP’s, growth rates, inflation
rates and the like, indicators, so oft leant upon by economists to underpin
their arguments. Basically a
dismissing of the current African economic turnaround as being statistically
misleading and so on. But
all was not bad – there was a concession at the end that ‘ the
evidence does not yet readily provide us with an answer’. Had it been included in the title as a
rider, perhaps one would have read the article with a little less
disregard for the approach of the author ( an associate professor at the Simon
Fraser University for International Studies ) who travels to Africa and inter
alia ‘..conducts interviews at statistical
offices.’
I have no beef with Prof Jerven who I am sure is a very nice and capable academic, but what I do have a problem with is when
‘statistics’ are quoted as the unrequited truth and serve a particular
agenda. As one who was born
and bred in South Africa and spent much of the 90’s and early 2000’s travelling
in Africa, and for the past two years have spent almost half my time there I
think there is so much more to consider than ‘economic indicators.’ The fact of the matter is that the
sources of these numbers are notoriously unreliable. Nigeria’s GDP recently grew overnight, as if by magic,
by 89% to $510bn overtaking Africa’s previous largest economy South Africa
worth a mere $370bn[2]. What economic statistical
witchery is this you may say ?
Well it just so happened that Nigeria had waited two decades to update
its numbers. So if Africa’s
largest economy can wait so long (and in the interim misreport its numbers) – who is to say that there aren’t many
other African countries under- reporting their true economic state?
As far as I am concerned the matter is
neither here nor there. The
only people who are actually going to make a difference to Africa are Africans
themselves and those who take it upon themselves to see the Continent and
experience what is happening first hand. To use the military metaphor – the solution lies in
‘boots on the ground.’
Aid has been one of the most misguided, damaging Western artifacts which
has single handedly constrained African growth through the perpetuation of the
culture of dependence. Wealthy Americans and Europeans assuaging their
guilt, fired up by pitiful images of pot bellied kwashiorkor victims and
amplified by well meaning Live Aid concerts, dished out billions from
afar. This resulted
only in the filling up of Swiss (and other) bank accounts of, the then, ruling
elites who sought only to perpetuate their rule, with no thought for their starving
subjects. Aid does not and
it certainly did not, trickle down.
Africa needs to build on its successes
which in the last two decades have been numerous. The rise in democracy, the reduction in war and corruption
and the spread of empowering technologies, like mobile. Technologies, especially those which
help to spread knowledge as we have seen with some of the spin-offs of mobile
are going to be the biggest drivers of accountable governance which is required
in even larger measure. A
great example of this is Ushahidi [3] a community based social media software
project that, inter alia, empowers
communities to monitor political unrest and thereby make Governments more
accountable.
An improvement in governance and
accountability can only be good for Africa’s citizens, although there will be resistance along
the way. Witness the harassment of
South Africa’s public protector, Thumi Madonsela, who seeks to make President
Zuma accountable for his misspending of state funds.[4]
The fastest way of empowering Africans
citizens will be by providing them with access to information, education and
knowledge. An informed public is
an empowered public. I
know of no faster way to achieve this,
than to accelerate the process that is currently underway, of spreading the information highway
across the Continent. In the last
five years we have seen undersea cables landing at key points across the
Continent being commissioned and in this time providing a 500 fold increase in
bandwidth capacity to the world wide web. However these magical fiber optic cables remain
dark, unlit, quiet. A
24 lane highway with just a lone cyclist. It is now time to get the traffic moving.
By building a series of data centers at the
landing points of these cables I believe we have the best chance of catalyzing
the African data revolution.
Africans have shown just how techno savvy they are with their adoption
of cell phones and indeed with inventing unique and innovative services that
are World Class. The most obvious
of these is mobile money – M-Pesa – the genius system through which half of
Kenya’s economy flows.
Our plan is clear: to
provide the capacity, the connectivity and the services which will link Africa
to the World efficiently and cheaply.
Then watch Africa grow.
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