Time to end
the
stereotyping of Africa !
By
Jonathan
Power
TFF
Associate since 1991
Comments directly to
JonatPower@aol.com
March 16, 2007
LONDON - Another Africa film - this time the riveting
“Blood Diamond”, last month the superbly acted “Last
King of Scotland”, and “Out of Africa” still vibrates
in my mind ten years later. But am I alone in being rather cross when
my 16 year old daughter asks me yet again, “Is Africa really like
that?”
I tell her part of Africa WAS like that. Some of it, a diminishing portion
of this vast continent, is still like that. But most of it never was and
today it certainly is not.
I have covered war and revolution in Africa. I have seen political opponents
hung from the bridges of the main thoroughfare in Conakry. I have been
falsely imprisoned in Sierra Leone. I have lived for months the village
life in Lesotho and Tanzania. I walk the streets of Nigerian towns at
night (parts, but not all, of Lagos excepted). But I have very rarely
been afraid - perhaps only when travelling on some dilapidated Nigerian
airline like the one that crashed shortly after I disembarked in Port
Harcourt last year.
Africans are usually the most courteous, hospitable, forgiving and cheerful
of all the peoples I have met on God’s earth. And now I rejoice
mightily when I see the old continent, so beset by inhospitable terrain,
demanding climate, poor soils, the legacy of the slave trade, self-interested
colonialism and imperialism and, in the south, apartheid, really beginning
to move forward economically and politically. Indeed, I have to confess
that aspects of colonialism and the missionary activity that accompanied
it put down some rather good foundations and Africa has only learnt to
progress when it stopped fighting the shadows of the white man and started
to work with him rather than against him.
It is all going very fast yet most people still seem blissfully unaware
of what is apace. But turn to the December issue of “Finance and
Development”, the periodical of the International Monetary Fund,
and read Michael Klein, chief economist of the International Finance Corporation:
“When the history of the 21st century will be written, it may become
clear that Africa today is where East Asia was in the late 1950s - just
about to surprise the world”.
He argues that economists now believe that the majority of African countries
have a good chance of achieving annual growth rates of 10%, like India
and China. “Thus it is conceivable that Africa could, on average,
reach the income level of recent entrants to the European Union by 2050.
Were this to happen, today’s children in Africa would leapfrog all
history’s stages of development in a lifetime.”
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, dead in the water for so
long, weighed down by the rocks of malign dictatorship and corruption,
now hums with economic activity and democratic exuberance. On the other
side of the continent Tanzania, for so long a failed Christian socialist
experiment - kind but dirt poor was the best way to describe it - has
now embraced capitalism, albeit a version with a human face, and is experiencing
such rapid growth it has the tax revenue to spend on the things that the
socialists only dreamed of - a school and clinic in every village.
Cocoa and coffee? Yes, it continues. But in recent years the much more
profitable cut-flower and fresh fish business in Kenya and Uganda with
overnight flights to Europe has blossomed. “Nollywood”, the
Nigerian film industry, has overtaken both Hollywood and Bollywood in
the number of films produced each year. It provides jobs for a million
people.
Productivity, that key to economic progress, is improving fast. According
to the IMF, African textile and garment firms are almost as productive
as Chinese ones on the factory floor. Economic reform involving privatisation,
bank shakeouts, business registration and trade liberalisation is common
almost everywhere. Tanzania and Ghana were in the world’s top ten
reformers last year. This is why foreign direct investment has increased
from $12 billion in 1980 to well over $100 billion today. Investors seem
particularly confident in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Madagascar, Mozambique,
Tanzania and Uganda. In Nigeria, Mittal is resuscitating the old giant
Soviet-built steel works. Virgin has essentially taken over the role of
the old, moribund Nigerian Airways. Chinese motorbike manufacturers are
churning out thousands of machines and still can’t meet demand.
Two storey houses now dominate the towns- you have to go out into the
remoter villages to find a traditional mud hut.
There is still much to do - why not stop grumbling about Europe and the
U.S. blocking the Doha ground and simply reduce trade barriers on a non-discriminatory
basis by opening domestic markets to all African trading partners?
This year I am taking my daughter to Africa to see for herself.
Copyright © 2007 Jonathan
Power
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Jonathan Power can be
reached by phone +44 7785 351172
and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Jonathan
Power
2007 Book
Conundrums
of Humanity
The Quest for Global Justice
“Conundrums
of Humanity” poses eleven questions for our future progress,
ranging from “Can we diminish War?” to “How
far and fast can we push forward the frontiers of Human Rights?”
to “Will China dominate the century?”
The answers to these questions, the author believes, growing out
of his long experience as a foreign correspondent and columnist
for the International Herald Tribune, are largely positive ones,
despite the hurdles yet to be overcome. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers,
London, 2007.
Jonathan
Power's book from 2001
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