Africa may well be pivotal to the future of the world, as many experts say, but if this is indeed true, the continent is, for the time being, wasting a truly awful amount of energy to hide its potential game!

The World Economic Forum states, “The future is African”. The Council on Foreign Relations, a reputed independent American thinktank whose global board of advisors includes luminaries from all over the globe, says exactly the same and points out that the world’s growth which depended so much on China between 1980 and 2020 will, in future, inevitably depend on Africa. Didn’t even Shakira coin Waka Waka back in 2010?

However, if we are indeed hooked onto further planetary growth, with all its attendant challenges for climate change and the ‘boiling’ planet, the figures look incontrovertible.

More than half (54%) of the 2.4 billion population growth expected over the next decades will take place in Africa, which will more than double its current population of 1.2 billion. UNICEF predicts that over two billion babies will be African over the next 33 years such that whilst only 10% of the world’s under-18s were African in the 1950s, they will represent fully one third by 2050. Urbanisation, currently at 40% of the population will reach 58% by 2050. Even though only 63 % have running treated water and only 33% benefit from sewerage services, 93% of Africans already possess a mobile phone! In sub–Saharan Africa, two people out of three do not have access to electricity, even intermittently. Those figures more than suggest the word ‘potential ‘and indeed theorize that massive growth is a possibility. However, how probable is it? Can it indeed happen?

A walk around our continent suggests that the picture is decidedly mixed. In 2023-24, the top African performers, GDP growth-wise, should, according to AfDB’s latest bi-annual report, be led by Niger (9.6%), Senegal (9.4%), Rwanda (7.6%), Côte d’Ivoire (7.1%) and Democratic Republic of Congo (6.8%). However, just in the past few days, Niger’s government was toppled in a putsch, completing an African necklace of militarily ruled (or troubled) countries across central Africa, spanning from Guinea, Mali and Burkina Faso, in the west, to Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Sudan in the East. More of a noose than a necklace, if you ask me… Niger’s promising growth (whether it was meant to be equitably distributed or not, is yet another question and is not established yet …) looks like it has just been hit by a bullet in the frontal cortex. The next best performer to be, Senegal, is facing its own troubles through the arrest and detention of Ousmane Sonko, an ex-tax inspector and firebrand opposition figure, as riots erupt countrywide, internet services are curtailed and Sonko’s party is banned.

Of the powerhouses of the continent, Egypt, Nigeria, and South Africa do not add up to much of a model or indeed of an inspiration. To get out of financial trouble and low forex reserves, Egypt just signed up for a USD 3 Bn loan with the IMF and, as part of the deal, is hard at work selling USD 1.9 Bn worth of the state assets it has amassed with so much appetite over the years. South African growth is stuck at 0.2% going forward, reined in by huge power shortages at Eskom and such poor governance that GDP per head is lower in 2019 than in 2008, and unemployment remains worryingly high at 35%, with a peak of 50% for youth. Nigeria shows no particular contrast within this top three, except for the oil and gas that it produces with, unfortunately, little ‘trickle down’ for the rest of its 211 million population. Its GDP per head stands at USD 2,184 in 2022, whilst Egypt clocked USD 4,295 and South Africa boasted USD 6,777, with Mauritius actually feeling left down at USD 10,216... Well, of course, we felt let down! For Seychelles was top of the pile at USD 15, 875, with their inflation rate actually going negative by 1.3%, year on year, this June!

The point, looking forward, is that the demographic dividend of Africa will not be put to much effective use without heavy investment in education and huge skilling upgrades. Making babies is obviously the easy part. Tooling them up for modern life is a hugely different ball game. Africa also has oodles of farmland to exploit (climate change permitting) but would be ill-inspired to “Kill the Boer, kill the farmer”, as per Julius Malema’s sung entreaty, if the Zimbabwean experience is anything to go by! However, in the main, Africa boasts of extremely useful population dynamics in an era where most other countries will grow old and thus see their working populations shrink. This may entail Africans becoming worldbeating migrants to plug employment needs elsewhere or, more optimistically, that Africa becomes, like China more recently, another of the new “World’s factories”.

Additionally, Africa boasts of untold riches in extractive industries, from petrol and gas (which they should obviously NOT mothball, whilst more developed countries have happily polluted the atmosphere for the last two centuries and are still doing so on an on-going basis), rare earths, and many other minerals. Nevertheless, African nations will need to be sensible enough to exploit these resources for their own populations, rather than for their elites alone. This will require major cultural changes and vast improvements in governance standards and practices as well as deftness in dealing with the world economies’ “bigger boys” who can display decades, sometimes centuries, of shiningly successful exploitative capabilities of their own! Not an easy task, then. Is it a likely outcome?

You can doubt that somewhat when you search for the inspirational, straightforward, competent, and honest leadership that is required to cash in on the opportunity. We all thought Ethiopia had found a gem in Abiy Ahmed. He was even a Nobel Peace prizewinner in 2019. He is now entangled for generations with a Tigrayan issue and human rights abuses, and the locking up of opponents and journalists have heavily soiled his promising start. The inspirational leaders of Africa, from Mandela to Lumumba, look to be mostly dead…

The other unmistakable fact to be reckoned with is that, since the 1990s’ strong democratic upsurge at the end of the cold war, Africa has been moving towards autocracy. This is bad news indeed since economic success seems heavily correlated with democratic practices, whatever the direction of causality. Just take a look at VDem’s 2022 report, Figure 1, to be convinced (*). Of the 36 most democratic countries worldwide, only Jamaica (GDP/h of 5,200$) could be considered poor. The highest rated democracies in Africa were South Africa (49th worldwide), Seychelles (51st) and Ghana (52nd), only Seychelles improving its democratic practices in the last ten years. Mauritius was then 72nd and tailed such ‘paragons’ as Senegal, Malawi, Namibia, Lesotho, and Botswana and… Burkina Faso. The vast majority of the 54 African countries are regrouped within the bottom 50% of liberal countries. This does not bode well. Especially in countries where the only qualification of the autocrat is his control of the armed forces. We may not yet have 54 full autocrats yet in Africa, but we surely have far too many of them…

«The demographic dividend of Africa will not be put to much effective use without heavy investment in education and huge skilling upgrades.»

There is one obvious explanation of the correlation of democracies and economic strength. Schematically, in democracies, everyone has a voice, however tenuous; institutions are free and do their jobs objectively, meritocracy is the rule, corruption is nailed, punished and expunged, whomsoever is involved; the country benefits from the positive inputs of all, even if same may not agree with what the political leadership is doing. In autocracies, only the opinion of one man counts. If he is wrong, nobody dares tell him and he can drag everyone… down with him. In the USA, Elon Musk is not on the same page as Biden, but his SpaceX venture or his Tesla cars are not boycotted. In China, Jack Ma cannot thrive if he does not toe the line of the one and only president Xi. Just compare South and North Korea since they split up in 1953!

Africa (and Mauritius) should take stock! Democracies are messier and far from perfect, but always eventually better at getting a fairer deal for their citizens. Alternatively, have I missed something?

(*) v-dem.net/media/publications/dr_2022.pdf