Imagine the international community as a school playground. The developed and emerging economies are like a gang of cool kids, the one everyone else wants to be part of. Developing economies, on the other hand, are the nerds, they’re nice enough but people aren’t exactly queuing up to hang out with them, except those who need help with their homework.

Mauritius is the new kid. After our fi rst few days at school during which we went mostly unnoticed, we’re ready to make friends. And like any other normally constituted kid, our fi rst instinct is to want to join the popular group. So, we walk up to them, all self-aware and awkward, and treat them like old buddies. In no time they size us up, decide we’re definitely not cool gang material and tell us to be on our way. That’s basically where we currently stand in the international community.

Developed countries aren’t really interested in befriending us unless it can benefit them in some way. Not that they’d ever say it to our faces, mind you, but they’ve proven it time and time again. We prefer to live in denial though and pretend that by giving us development aid, they’re showing us how much they care. For some reason, we feel that hanging out with the countries of the region - those with whom we share a market and development objectives - is beneath our station in life. On an unconscious level, our attitude has been molded by the disdain that we’ve been treated with by the cool kids: they look down on us so we look down on our African neighbours.

An attractive proposition

That’s going to have to change though. Although still riddled with problems, the continent to which we belong is delivering strong economic growth. And this is already having a knock-on effect on consumption patterns there. An article published in The Economist this week stated that, “Africa already has a Rs1.8 trillion economy and is forecast to have a population of 1.3 billion by 2020. ‘Lion’ economies such as Ghana and Rwanda have grown faster than South Korea, Taiwan and other East Asian ‘tiger’ economies in five of the past seven years, albeit from a lower base”. Imagine that: a population in excess of one billion people, tens of millions of whom enjoy a rapidly increasing disposal income.

Right there, on our doorsteps! What more can one ask for? The private sector latched onto this potential a while back. Although not all of its ventures have succeeded, the fact that several local economic operators have been present in Africa since before the boom years means that they’ll be well-placed to exploit it. Government however has been terribly sluggish and sometimes haughty even. The low level of importance given to the nomination of representatives in key organizations on the continent is one of the more obvious manifestations of this aloofness, as is our relative ignorance of African social, political and cultural affairs. This has not gone unnoticed, on a continent where political ties in particular still matter a great deal.

Without wanting to flog a dead horse, the prime minister’s absence at the Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit in Maputo last week was symptomatic of a mindset that reflects badly on all of us and that needs to be changed. Could you imagine him missing out on a summit hosted in a European capital? If we act soon, we might still be able to blame our lack of commitment on our insularity. Once the geeky kids grow up though, they’ll be far less inclined to accept us as their friends, especially after years of all but ignoring them.

Wish we were there: Africa’s the place to be.

Nicholas RAINER