The Black Man’s Burden: The Diaspora's Urgent Mandate to Awaken Africa's Sleeping Giants
Part III: How the African Diaspora can unlock African economic growth and success - selling Africa abroad
The African Diaspora needs to take the lead in promoting the continent’s business and investment prospects around the world. This means more social media content, community initiatives, talks and workshops dedicated to dispelling myths and enlightening the broader public about the African continent as it now stands.
Selling Africa abroad
While we’re beginning to see a slow reversal and reform of global perceptions of Africa as a whole, so many non-Africans - and a significant share of Africans themselves - have come to internalize an image of a Godforsaken, war-torn, poverty-stricken and helpless region.
Decades of negatively slanted media coverage and fundraising campaigns led by international charities, have inked the pictures of poor, desperate families cradling wailing, malnourished babies with oversized heads and stomachs in the popular imagination. My generation in the Millennials and others before us throughout the globe have only been exposed to this narrow, and rather crude narrative surrounding Africa for the most part.
Such depictions were most prominent throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s. The Volcker Shock period of the 1980’s was marked by high interest rates in the US and globally, as well as an appreciating dollar. This spelt bad news for many African nations who had racked up large US-dollar denominated debts in the post-independence years of the 1960’s and 1970’s. At the time, new African governments undertook milestone national projects and pursued a rapid, and targeted expansion of schools and hospitals, in response to the demands and needs, of a freshly liberated electorate.
A lot of these projects were financed by government borrowing from abroad. As rates rose globally throughout the 1980’s, the continent fell further and further into economic despair. By 1987, the external debt to GDP average calculated for Sub-Saharan Africa’s most affected countries was 81%. Today, only one small island in Africa has an external debt to GDP percentage hovering within that range, while the average for the region as a whole is now only about 27%.
Back then, debt distressed governments turned to the international community for debt relief, and were presented with Structural Adjustment Programs aka SAPs. SAPs required recipient governments to agree to World Bank and IMF (International Monetary Fund) macroeconomic policy prescriptions. These included heavily curtailed spending on public services, the stripping away of business regulations and protectionist measures, as well as pushing for lower tax rates for private firms. The idea was that such tweaks would boost growth and decrease the real burden of the debt over time.
Nevertheless, external debt continued its upward trajectory. It seemed as if silver bullet emblazoned SAPs didn’t make much of a difference to anything, but they did make a world of a difference to Africans on the ground. They had become victims of the abandoned social programs and services inflicted by cash-strapped governments. A lot more of Africa subsequently became more vulnerable to economic and political shocks. Throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s, horrible famines in Ethiopia and Somalia, the breakout of an AIDs epidemic, and a barrage of military coups and civil wars, contributed to the development of extremely negative perceptions of Africa by people and communities the world over.
Indeed, many of us still look at the continent through these lenses. But, perception and reality are not always one and the same. In the late 2000’s, we saw the inception of a new, ‘Africa Rising’ narrative. Rising commodity prices that were supported by an Asian growth and trade boom in the 2000’s, widescale debt forgiveness, and improved macroeconomic management across the Motherland, have created a prospering Africa. A lot of us outside the continent weren’t - and still are not - up to speed with this new Africa and need educating.
Put simply: this is not the Africa of the 1990’s or 1980’s. We are worlds away from that. And we have to inform and reassure the global public about this. Economic growth has been consistent across the continent as a whole for nearly 30 years. With each passing decade ever since then, Africa has only become richer, healthier and more technologically advanced.
I know, this sounds a lot like a “things will be different this time.” kind of piece, but perhaps they are. What makes me say this? Well, even over the last couple decades, shocks that would have had the power to completely debilitate Africa in the past, fail to snuff out the flame of a rising Africa today. The continent has been hit with multiple civil wars, the headwinds of the 08' Global Financial Crisis, Ebola and then the effects of a global pandemic and cost of living crisis. The sky isn’t falling down, we’re still yet to see the region descend into the same scale of chaos and disarray of that earlier age, as it enters a new chapter in its growth story.
Again, this is not the same Africa that you grew up with. The Africa of the 1980’s and 1990’s was home to newly formed, independent nations. Prior to that, the overwhelming majority of Africans lived as farmers, within smaller ethnic groups and communities out in the villages. The harsh geography of the continent also made it difficult for people to gather and organize on a large scale, all the while isolating different groups from one another and the rest of the world.
Independence thrusted a lot of Africa into a modern and mechanized world, with tools alien to it and its way of life, as part of a unit of randomly paired members. The period of rule that followed it needs to be remembered as a learning phase for and introduction to survival in the globalized, rules-based and market-orientated New World Order.
Africa was much more vulnerable to external shocks and political instability because, back then, its foundation was untested and immature, and much weaker as a result. For instance, in 1975 universities in Sub-Saharan Africa had 181,000 students enrolled for study. 181,000 students on the path to receiving a tertiary education to help them serve the needs of a continent bursting with nearly 340 million people at that time. A lot of governments and businesses across the continent seriously lacked the quality manpower that the successful operation of complex economies are contingent upon.
But that was the Africa of old, it’s a completely different story today. Sub-Saharan Africa’s student population alone has grown fiftyfold (to about 9 million since the 1970’s, with the population only witnessing a fourfold increase over the same period.) In addition to this, 430,000 Africans (Sub-Saharan) are also studying abroad.
The Africa of today has a much vaster pool of high quality labour to support growth and development. People with exposure to alternative systems within and beyond the continent abound. Businesses have evolved and are multiplying to expand and create different markets. The management expertise, understanding of systems thinking and systems planning, handle and application of science and technology found within the continent today is simply more capable of carrying out the vision of leadership, and working to new and evolving decision-making mechanisms.
Zambia’s recent renegotiation of its Chinese debt exemplifies the evolution in African leadership and governance well. For those reading who may not know, Zambia has been experiencing quite a lot of debt issues as of late. They’re one of the only African nations to default on their foreign debt obligations, but if you were not told, you really would not be able to catch on. Growth for the last two years has been over five percent, plus its stock market valuation recently hit an all-time high. And it’s no wonder, Zambian leadership somehow managed to restructure its debt to deliver a deal that was widely hailed as ‘historic’. The country renegotiated down interest repayments on what could be close to half of its total debt from an average of 3.9% to one nearing 1%.
Quite the feat it was, demonstrating how much more attuned Africa’s leaders have become to the world of economics, business and finance. Hakainde Hichilema, the President of Zambia, is an economics graduate who formerly served as CEO of the Zambian branch of Price Waterhouse Coopers, and is listed as the country’s second largest cattle-rancher after all. He used his excellent business and management skills to identify the pressure points in the arrangement, and exploited any leverage that was available to him. He understood that Zambia exports billions of dollars worth of raw materials and products to China. He was very likely also wise to the fact that China is heavily reliant on copper to fuel its manufacturing and infrastructure building, and as the ninth largest producer of the resource on the entire planet, Zambia has lots of it.
More of the world is also beginning to take note of an Africa Rising. Africa was admitted into the G20 last year, as world leaders, corporations and us ordinary folk everywhere engage with Africans with a new sense of hustle, curiosity and optimism. Indeed, as Africa’s population (its young, urban population in particular) continues to surge, its appeal as a big consumer market, and an even bigger labour market - complete with over 600 million English, French and Portuguese speakers - in an ageing world, will position the continent as a major geopolitical battleground in the decades ahead.
This is particularly apt in light of a global order that’s increasingly fragmenting into one defined by multipolarity. Western European nations and once colonial masters like the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Germany are now ramping up their political, economic and cultural efforts throughout Africa. But, they’re increasingly having to contend with rival great powers such as China, Russia and India. While countries across the Middle East like the UAE and Saudi Arabia are also beginning to emerge as big players across the African landscape.
Global Investor and business appetite for the continent is deepening. With more foreign investors, companies and nation states expressing their interest in Africa, organizations and individuals within the African Diaspora have a key, incomparable role to play in how this new energy is channeled. Exposure to different cultures and business practices abroad, anchored by the development and knowledge of new networks and languages, reserve a crucial role for the Diaspora in brokering global partnerships and cooperation that creates good business for all stakeholders involved.
I didn’t know about the Zambian president. He reminds me of the Beninese president. Businessmen venturing in politics seem to work in Africa. I wonder where it hasn’t though