Three economic assets that Africa has the rich world beat on
Here's why the continent is in prime position to transform its weaknesses into strengths
I am a British digital nomad who has spent the last three years traveling and living in several African countries, including: Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Ghana.
While here, it feels as if I am living within a paradox, as the continent simultaneously sits in the past and the future. Throughout this piece, I am going to explore and share some of the insights I have learnt here that I think those of us from the Developed World (Western nations in particular) should pay close attention to. Because it’s here where Africa has a competitive edge that can snowball into something more.
Africans are prolific entrepreneurs
75 percent of the Sub-Saharan African population of working age are self-employed. This rate is the highest among all continents, and does partially speaks to the fact that the economy has failed to create sufficient numbers of formal, salaried jobs, at a pace in line with the number of people entering the workforce every year.
Thus, a lot of self-employed workers across the continent are forced to consider working for themselves in order to survive. On the other hand, with every difficulty lies an opportunity for growth and personal development.
The more a person is exposed to and tested by the world of enterprise, the more entrepreneurial they become. Skills and traits such as interpersonal and communication skills, problem-solving, perseverance, open-mindedness and being pro-active are strongly associated with entrepreneurs, and success overall.
The entrepreneurial mindset and the epistemology underpinning the business of business is now also increasingly tied to fields like systems thinking, marketing, financial management and accounting; the very same fields that have become ubiquitous throughout our societies and the workplace.
We live in a world dominated by disruptive technologies where the average person will pivot between career choices 5-7 times throughout their working life. Now, more than ever, everyone has to move fast and with self-motivation, features crucial to the functioning of a healthy business or trade. And the composition of Africa’s workforce makes it well-positioned to meet the demands of this changing world.
Less development=less baggage
The top floor of a skyscraper gives the best view. Africa has taken a little longer to take-off economically and begin the process of industrialization, but it’s adapting quicker.
The fact that much of the developed world is already built up and established, has meant that systems, worldviews and perspectives have calcified and become entrenched. Bureaucratic build-up, stringent regulations, and slow and complicated planning processes and permissions protect incumbent industries and create gatekeepers that hamper the wheels of growth and innovation. Many of us across the Western world - in countries such as the UK, Germany and elsewhere - have become all too familiar with this reality.
Our nations increasingly suffer from inertia, stuck in our ways while emerging economies like China, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are expanding 5G, high-speed rail, and digital banking and online payments. We’re like the retired parents whose kids have long since moved out, passing our days in a family home with literal tons of stuff stashed around everywhere.
We spend hours on end working hard to maintain and keep all of it clean and tidy. We question how much of all it we need, perhaps we want to give it all away, maybe we want to sell-up and move out to that townhouse out in the country that we always dreamed about, but what about all of this stuff? How do we go about removing, sorting, boxing and transporting everything for our anticipated move? For some people, this might be too much to handle all at once, and they end up not embarking on a new journey and taking that first step, descending into prisoners of their homes.
Conversely, Africa is a cornucopia comprising of wild forestry, jungle and open land, representing a wilderness of sorts, relatively untouched by large-scale industry and development. African soil and society is ripe and ready for new, transformative change, in a way that other parts of the world can only envy.
The floors built further up the skyscraper not only get the best and most panoramic views of their surroundings, they’re also closer to the winds of change. An 18 year old studying computer science today is going to be more malleable and in-tune with the hardware, software and core theories that define the field today than a 38 year old who started learning about it 20 years ago. The latter’s OS is long overdue for an update, while the former’s OS is developed and acquired immediately, from the beginning.
The 21st Century Prosumer
Look no further than to the armies of unemployed and underemployed college graduates found everywhere across the developed world. Where people have borrowed tens of thousands of dollars to be lectured on subjects and vocations by people years removed from that industry, with outdated textbooks and software. The world of work is rapidly changing, and large, bloated educational institutions harbouring countless decision levers, departments, donors, as well as research and interest groups can’t change fast enough to keep up.
Circling back to Africa here, we see the opposite effects taking hold. A lot of the youth acquire different competencies via online Facebook groups and communities, YouTube, and even TikTok, along with popular MOOCs (massive open online courses) such as Coursera, Microsoft Learn and Google Career Certificates. Africans are going to college too, and in increasing numbers, but these new and rising places of higher learning have been established in a way that augments, rather than supplants newer, more novel forms of learning.
The results of these phenomena already look promising, with more Africans migrating all over the continent and the rest of the world, this covers movement to less familiar, uncharted places too. As more seek work and business opportunities not only in Europe and the USA, but within the Middle East and Asia, in countries such as the UAE, Saudi Arabia, China and India. Searching online, popular video tutorials of Nigerians, Kenyans and other Africans sharing their knowledge of the world in areas ranging from software engineering to farming abound.
Lots of Westerners - on the contrary - have been trained and schooled for traditional office and factory work, and for many, that's all that we know. We're positioned further away from new sources of innovation and so are unprepared for their disruption. Our time of real growth and blossoming occurred more than 100 years ago, and more than a few of us have forgotten how to reinvent ourselves.
A lot more of us find ourselves struggling nowadays because we're mostly working in dying industries, and our skillsets and overall operating system is outdated and falling out of touch with the new mainstream.
This is not the case for Africa though. There are a lot more young people in the continent, many of them resident in small towns and villages. These are relatively fresh, unobstructed minds who are entering the workforce at a time of seismic change with less baggage in between them and tomorrow's opportunities.
Africans haven’t forgotten the arts of farming and horticulture
Farming and agriculture marks as the backbone of any civilization. Africa is still mostly rural, being the least urbanized continent in the world. lazy cows, goats, donkeys and camels majestically glide the streets here - they’re background imagery. In countries such as Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Uganda, between 70-80 percent of the entire population reside in rural towns and villages and are engaged in farming related labour.
Lots of people within the bigger cities and surrounding satellite urban clusters also dedicate a garden, balcony, rooftop, at home or via local allotments to cultivating herbs and spices, tomatoes, yam, and the odd chicken pen. With Africa home to 60 percent of the world’s remaining arable farmland, this matter shouldn’t be taken lightly.
Countries across the rich world have decided to treat food production as irrelevant for the bulk its civilians. A lot of the rich world’s civilians are close to 100 percent reliant on supermarkets, chain restaurants and UberEATS to substantiate their diet. Our country roots have been severed in the name of efficiency. Leaving us ill-prepared for food shocks likely to hit us in the face of climate change and geopolitical stability.
Africa is a continent where challenges catalyze innovation and growth. Its high rate of self-employment isn't just a survival tactic but a foundation for developing entrepreneurial acumen, vital in a tech-driven world. In contrast to the stagnation of developed nations, Africa's developmental delay is its strategic advantage, offering a fresh canvas for modern advancements and education. The continent's strong agricultural heritage further positions it as a key player in future global scenarios, demonstrating resilience and adaptability in the face of change and uncertainty.