The Emerging, Booming, Rising Stories of Africa: Hype or Hope?

Over the past few years, Africa and other emerging market economies spurred by the rising middle class, extractive industries dependant on natural resources like oil, and foreign investment have dominated the editorials of financial and economic news and conferences. Different groups incessantly spew out cooler than cool and hotter than hot data about Africa that has such calming fragrance that I ,someone who is often fed up with the negative caricatures about Africa, do welcome. McKinsey reports that African consumer industry is expected to grow by $400 billion by 2020. Countries in Sub-Saharan Africa are among the fastest growing countries in the world; at least six of the world’s top ten fastest growing economies are in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Sometimes, in some places, the statistic appears accurate and real on the surface. I was in Ghana last year. I was amazed at the changes in several sectors of the economy and society. I witnessed an increasing growth of consumption industries in the category of telecommunication, internet services, financial services, high-end grocery, clothing and apparel in the big cities like Accra and Kumasi. Cinema halls are enthusiastically patronized by the so-called middle class with fat wallets and purses. Not bad at all. Really welcome.

Unfortunately, however, as soon as I drove out of the cities into the outskirts of the country, everything I’ve read and heard appeared like hype and not hope. It was at the fringes that I saw that, yes, it is true, Africa is emerging and rising, but it is doing this by creating a huge and almost irrelevant 99% and a few privileged winners in the big cities, the equivalent of what is referred to as the 1% by the Occupy Movement in the US. The much trumpeted growth and development is not spread across the geographies of the lands and sectors of the economies and it is not translating into equivalent improvement in the daily lives of the 99%. Behind the catchy headlines and uplifting editorials, objective analysis will always lead to a somber conclusion. The reality is that the African story for Lagos is not true for Nigeria and that for Accra is almost irrelevant to Ghana.

The problem is complex and will require a set of complex solutions but that is not excuse for leaving the problem as it is. If you have any ideas on how the recent ‘boom’ in Africa can be made and seen as real, please share them below. I have two suggestions.

1. The African 1% must do more. When the African 1%, (the privileged, the super rich, the ‘educated’, the elite, the Upper Class) hang out around the grill, when they sit under the sun-hat, and when they sip their beer , they have to come up with real solution, solutions that are independent on Government but purely driven by private citizens, to solve the 42% youth unemployment in Nigeria, the depressing malaria death rate and rural poverty which is endemic in the region.
2. Governments should push effective social and welfare policies to lift the majority of the struggling 99% out of abject poverty. A system for revenue redistribution that ensures that the masses benefit from the ‘oil money’ (used only figuratively)

It is true that Africa is rising, emerging and booming, but there will be social and political risk to governments and the 1% unless the base that is rising and emerging is broadened.