The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) published its most recent African Economic Outlook today. In it, the OECD warned that although Africa has been urbanizing at an unprecedented rate, it must take steps to ensure that that process remains sustainable or it could lead to enormous economic collapses.
Self-congratulatory rhetoric keeps springing from the lips of World Economic Forum elites – at the expense of reality. Software executive Brett Parker claims “Africa will probably remain natural resources-driven for the next two decades at least.” African Leadership University’s Fred Swaniker
The current slump in world commodity prices is forcing Africa to rethink its traditional dependence on raw material exports. This is why the time for African nations to lay the foundations for transitioning from extractive to learning economies is now.
The jolts are real. The International Monetary Fund has projected that the continent will grow by 3% in 2016. This is well below the 6% average growth over the past decade and the lowest rate in the past 15 years.
The economic and political reach of the US, arguably the most visible and vocal Western country on the African continent is gradually being diminished. This follows a pattern in which the economic and political stronghold of Western countries has ebbed as the role of non-traditional donors such as China has grown in importance.
The recent sustained attention given to the economic performance of Africa is a sharp departure from the usual negative and patronising representation of the continent in the global media. The old narrative represented a continent riddled by wars, famines, disease and the burdens of poor infrastructure and reckless governments.
While many think that the description of Africa as a hopeless continent was harsh, the Africa rising narrative was considered rather hyped.
In December 2015, Chinese President Xi Jinping flew into South Africa for the Forum on China-Africa Co-operation with great fanfare. There were many announcements about prospective investments across Africa. Agriculture featured prominently. However, what is the real story of China in Africa on the ground, beyond the hype?
After being out of fashion for a long period, agriculture has been coming back into the spotlight again as part of development policy. Amid rising concerns about food insecurity and high expectations from agribusiness, policymakers have started to emphasise the importance of agriculture as a source of employment.
Across Africa interest in agricultural investment as a source of employment growth and profit is growing. In South Africa, the National Development Plan identifies agriculture as the potential basis of one million new jobs.
If the mass media is to be believed, Africa is hardly a continent brimming with opportunities for business. However, for some time international business commentators have been positioning the continent as the next market with significant potential. It is now often described as being ready to take on the mantle of Asia where growth is slowing, markets are becoming crowded and internal competition is becoming more severe.
Africa’s natural environments and spectacular wildlife are about to face their biggest challenge ever. In a paper published today in Current Biology, my colleagues and I assess the dramatic environmental changes driven by an infrastructure-expansion scheme so sweeping in scope it is dwarfing anything the Earth’s biggest continent has ever endured.
People, food, and mining
The World Bank recently noted its opinion that growth in Africa hinges largely on a strong and virile judicial system. The World Bank made its comments in conjunction with the African Court on Human and Peoples Rights (ACHPR), and it targeted toward member nations of the African Union (AU).
