Opinion
The season of Africa
By Tolu Ogunlesi
Africa is all the rage these days. Every week, it seems there’s yet another Africa conference somewhere outside the continent – investors, bankers, journalists diplomats and academics falling over themselves to celebrate a continent once famous for its unremittingly awful news.
Africa, it seems, has come a long way from when Anthony Daniels wrote that “Africa is so technically backward that it would be cheaper to ship things from Mars than to produce them on the continent” (1987) and when Robert Kaplan published ‘The Coming Anarchy” (1994) and when The Economist magazine summed it up as “The Hopeless Continent” (2000).
Now Africa may actually be the world’s largest manufacturer and exporter of hope and good tidings of great joy.
I attended the launch of a photography exhibition, “Africa Is A Great Country”, in Stockholm, Sweden, last week. Swedish photographer, Jens Assur, visited 12 African cities, including Lagos, taking photos that seek to portray the daily realities of contemporary life across the continent.
To mark the opening of the exhibition there was an event, at which keynote speeches were delivered by the Chairperson of the African Union, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma; journalist and blogger, Minna Salami; Director of the Royal African Society, Richard Dowden, and Swedish medical doctor and statistician, Hans Rosling, and a Time Magazine ‘100 Most Influential People’ honoree, (alongside President Goodluck Jonathan), in 2012.
Ms. Dlamini-Zuma spoke of a continental renaissance, manifest in a number of ways: from the African Union’s new policy of “non-indifference” (she contrasted it with the “no-interference” policy of the defunct Organization of African Unity), to the ambitious pan-African infrastructure dreams (a highway and railway line from Dakar to Djibouti, for example), to the Pan African University idea (with campuses in Cameroon, Kenya, South Africa, Algeria and Nigeria). The African Union has itself come a long way from when it was an Old-Boys-Club of coup plotters, warlords and dictators – all of varying degrees of insanity.
Amidst the optimism, and “possibilism” (Rosling calls himself “a very serious possibilist”), I think there are some important things to note.
One. We ought to fiercely resist the temptation to be carried away by numbers. African governments are experts at pursuing statistical success at the expense of experiential, verifiable development. Which is why you’ll go on Twitter and see a Nigerian presidential spokesperson announcing that Nigeria’s life expectancy has risen by four years and expecting us to pause what we’re doing to applaud him.
Worshipful submission to these statistics (rising gross domestic product, rising foreign direct investments, etc) and acronymed-diadems (BRINCS and MINT membership cards) very easily steal energy and focus away from the real issues, which have to do with the gritty realities of the daily lives of the continent’s people (minimum wages, functioning schools and hospitals, access to capital, property rights, etc) and provide baseless refuge for lazy and mediocre governments.
That explains the conundrum of a Nigeria with an economy growing at more than 6 percent per annum year-on-year, but that still has not found a way to break free from the curse of darkness – 14 years after the return of democracy and billions of dollars later, we’re still having to listen to government officials demanding commendation (sometimes going as far as on the CNN for this) for providing us 4,000MW of electricity. Jokers.
Two. African countries also need to be more wary and more inquisitive of the antics, passions and ambitions of “do-gooders” – whether they be individuals, corporate organizations or governments. Which is why it’s interesting to read the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Lamido Sanusi’s hard-hitting China piece that appeared in the Financial Times last month. Sanusi comes out firing from the first line: “It is time for Africans to wake up to the realities of their romance with China.” He goes on to say that “Africa is now willingly opening itself up to a new form of imperialism” and that “a significant contributor to Africa’s de-industrialization and underdevelopment.” Ouch.
The Chinese authorities didn’t exactly appreciate those comments. As I imagine they will not appreciate the one by Zimbabwean Finance Minister, Tendai Biti, at the Reuters Africa Investment Summit in Johannesburg last week. Biti is quoted as saying: “The sad reality is that China are not comrades. Their companies are there to make profits like everyone else. The African textile industry has basically collapsed because of cheap Chinese imports … Africa needs China but let’s create an equitable relationship.”
More than anything else, I think the continent requires self-confidence. We ought to seek to replace the 1980s and 90s clamour for foreign aid with a clamor for self-confidence. That’s the injection we need, upon which all other things shall be added.
It is this self-confidence that will provide the basis for the push for equitable commercial relationships with the rest of the world. It is this self-confidence that will enable us realize the deep value that lies in intra-African trade – and spur the development of the kind of policies and infrastructure that will open the continent up to itself. It is this self-confidence that will propel the proliferation of Africa-inspired, African-owned ideas and solutions, to replace the current blind faith in the efficacy of “all-wise and all-knowing” western offerings.
It is this self-confidence that will enable us carry the battle against helpless dependence on foreign aid to the next level. And it is this self-confidence that will empower us to push out useless leaders through the ballot-boxes.
Ghanaian economist, George Ayittey, has spoken eloquently about a “Cheetah generation” that will transform the continent – “Africa’s salvation rests on the back of these cheetahs,” he says. He contrasts them with the “Hippo generation” – who are “not going to reform the economy because they benefit from the rotten status quo.”
We can argue about the degree of “simplistic-ness” of that binary perspective, but the underlying message should be taken to heart: this continent requires new kinds of thinking. The tactics and methods that brought us where we are cannot take us into the future we deserve, and aspire to.
One of these new modes of thinking has to do with: BigManism.
In Stockholm, the final minutes of the launch event featured a short speech by Swedish Finance Minister, the utterly cool (he wears a ponytail, and earring) Anders Borg. I found it very fascinating, the way the organizers squeezed him into a slot at the end of the event. “You have five minutes,” the moderator told the Finance Minister.
And he obeyed her; there was no fuss to it. I couldn’t help thinking of Nigeria, where government officials saunter into events hours late, disrupt the program with their overly large entourages and then expect to be given as much time as they want, to mouth a toxic mix of platitudes and outright lies.
I say it again: we urgently need to demystify public office in Nigeria and across the rest of the continent, dispense with all the BigManism and BigWomanism rubbish that we hold so dear.
It is this untoward deference to authority – the common argument is that it is “African culture and nature” to “show respect” – that allows all our Big Ogas – whether in government or in the private sector to get away with everything else. If they get away with hijacking public events, they will get away with misusing public or company funds and abusing public/shareholders trust.
We really need to stop all that nonsense. If Africa is to stay rising, amongst the many things we need to do will be this: Taking bulldozers to all the Big Egos that have helped trample the continent into this misshapen form.