Feb 1-15
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa sounded apocalyptical, when he
recently stated at a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel that
African development aspirations can be realized by Africans alone.
Ramaphosa wears many hats-a politician, trade union leader,
businessman and now president of the African Union. That way he
represents 54 –countries in the region. Therefore, his insights are
pertinent and should be given the importance it commands.
Implicit in the lauded statement is the development trail of the
continent. Africa has a long history of investors of various hues.
Centuries back, they had come in search of gold, diamond and other
precious metals. They also did invest in the continent in men and
materials and stashed away the mined goods to their respective home
countries or destinations that fetched huge price, sapping the
continent its precious resources and leaving Africans impoverished and
enslaved.
Unfortunately, the clarion call given to the foreign investors has not
changed in its essence. The buzz that makes the continent an
investment hub is that it accounts for 30% of global resources, huge
tracts of land and cheap labor. Does it mean Africa is still caught in
the crosshair of colonial hangover? African Development Bank in its
Economic Outlook for Africa 2020 concedes that in a sizeable number
of countries inclusive growth is still a far cry. Even in countries
where there is some improvement in the human development index, income
distribution is skewed. To dub these trends as the part and parcel of
a development process is to distract from the real issues since
countries that had invested in the continent have gained much more
than the home countries. That is what the statistics show.
On the other hand, where there are proliferation of investments by the
local businesses and industry, the economic process and distribution
of income are less skewed. Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Ghana,
Angola, Morocco etc are trailblazing examples of that.
What are the takeaways? Foremost is the need for assigning primacy to
the private sector to pave the way for an enterprise driven
development process rather than betting on commanding heights of the
public enterprises, which failed the continent. Examples of such
failures galore from South Africa to Zambia to Zimbabwe. Secondly,
invest in people like in education, healthcare and in providing a good
infrastructure network. Could AfDB or any other organization of that
ilk orchestrate and effectively implement a scheme for creating
100,000 entrepreneurs in the next five years or so for the continent?
The underpinning of what Ramaphosa said was precisely that.
