Opinion / Columnist
Is Africa rising?
01 Jun 2016 at 11:13hrs | Views
Africa Day, 25 May, has come and gone and we remain with the burdens of being Africans, the burden of the indignities and humiliation of colonialism, the burden of slavery which no other continent suffered from as the African continent, the burden of cruel post colonial rule by caricatures of despotic black Africans, the burdens of independence without freedom and liberty, the burden of dehumanizing and grinding poverty and hunger and the burden of neocolonialism.
The images of Africans seeking to escape the scourge of being on the African continent and drowning in boats bound for Europe are permanently etched on our minds, never mind those of our young women sold into modern day sexual slavery in the Middle East.We tire of the slogans and cliches on African Renaissance which lives only in conference rooms and seminars. During this entire past week, progressive Africans on the continent have been bombarded with the gospel of Africa's so-called renaissance. There are some who go further and say the continent has moved, in leaps and bounds - from pre-Kwame Nkrumah colonial malaise into the new age of development prosperity. Inevitably, Zimbabwe has not been spared this masochist deluge, mostly driven by ZANU PF toxic propaganda machinery attempting to cover tracks of thirty-six years of clueless governance incompetence.
It is not clear who coined the term 'Africa Rising', popularised as a title of an IMF conference hosted by Mozambique in 2014. However, writer Hadassah Egbedi insists the term is of no African provenance but created by 'a well-meaning Western journalist'. Bitange Ndemo adds intrigue to this mystery: "When the term was coined initially in 2000, it described the rapid economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa, and the belief that the growth trajectory would be sustained." As I see it, when it comes to the 'Africa Rising' narrative, there are those who choose to ignore perennial violators of social, economic and political rights - the rogue 'democracies' of Africa like Zimbabwe, Uganda, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo and Swaziland, who incidentally tend to shout loudest about this false narrative.
However, I am the first to admit that considering the state of Africa at the inception of the African Union in May 1963, we have made headway in embracing education and technology – in some cases like Botswana, South Africa, Zambia and Nigeria – truly effective democracy.
The continent boasts some of the most sophisticated infrastructure, as some companies like Dangote, DeBeers and Econet have made inroads into western stock markets. Some of the world's finest universities - Cape Town ranked 120 and Makerere 500 out of 800 - are in Africa, as the continent even exports its best human capital to the world's leading institutions and companies. Zimbabwean Fadzai Gwaradzimba is the United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Safety and Security while Andrew Bvumbe was appointed alternate executive director World Bank for African Group 1 constituency for the African region. Some of the best African soccer players in Europe's top leagues were/are African – Samuel Etoo, George Weah, Peter Ndlovu, Emmanuel Adebayor, Didier Drogba, Seydou Keita, Benni McCarthy, Zenadine Zidane and of course, Benjamin Mwaruwaru and Yaya Toure of Manchester City FC. On the artistic scene, there are dozens of Africans who have shaken the entertainment world – musician Youssou N'dour; Actors Edi Gathegi and Lupita Nyong'o of Kenya, our very own Thandi Newton and South Africa's Charlize Theron with numerous Hollywood accolades under her belt.
And yet weighed against Africa's economic and governance misery, these 'risings' are small drops in an ocean of poverty, food insecurity and wars that stalk Africa. Our continent is home to some of the largest informal settlements on the planet – a reflection of the skewed priorities that our governments have. East Africa has unleashed millions of displaced persons from unending conflicts in South Sudan and Somalia – with Kenya recently threatening to close the Dadaab refugee camp home to almost half a million Somalis now infiltrated by Al Shabaab. Almost twenty thousand people have been murdered by Boko Haram in Nigeria with thousands more displaced. Zimbabwe itself has three to four million of its citizens who have fled the brutality of Robert Mugabe's archaic dictatorship. And all this is happening under the 'supervision' of the African Union!
The massive migration of Africans escaping violence and poverty across the Mediterranean Sea is another strong indicator that something is terribly wrong in our continent. The International Organisation for Migration reported that nearly 2 000 people were killed while travelling by sea from Libya to Italy in 2014, with reports that every single day there are corpses off these boats.
Apart from a few countries out of the 54 in our continent, the human development index (HDI) is on the wrong side of the scale. United Nations and its agencies no longer just consider gross domestic product (GDP) as the only measure of 'development'.
According to richestlifestyle.com, HDI is a standard way of measuring the well-being of the people of a country. It is a comparative measure of literacy, life expectancy and standard of living. HDI is used to measure the impact of the economic policies on the quality of life of its people. Seychelles is right at the top of the list… "having met most of the Millennium Development Goals... The country has very good infrastructure. It has six airports with paved runways and eight airports with unpaved runways."
Some reports say Saharan Africa still accounts for 38 percent of global neonatal deaths, however with under -five deaths having fallen by almost forty percent. Although the continent still exhibits strong real GDP growth rates of between four to six percent, Zimbabwe's indices are in the negative. Actually, as already mentioned, GDP is not necessarily a sign of good economic health.
Some African countries (Sudan -520 000, Egypt -680 000, Angola and Algeria -1.9 million, Libya -1.6 million and Nigeria -2.5 million) are said to be producing more barrels of oil per day than ever before, resulting in proliferation of highways, skyscrapers and shiny shopping malls. However, this has not reduced poverty because of lack of beneficiation, corruption and externalisation. We ourselves have experienced the 'resource curse' as three million Zimbabweans face starvation, five million are unemployed and almost all our infrastructure has collapsed – yet ZANU PF cronies spirited fifteen billion dollars-worth of diamonds out of the country in the last five years! We have absolutely nothing to show for our share of the sixty-billion-dollar worth of foreign direct investment into Africa the last ten years because ZANU PF runs a battery of repulsive economic policies.
And so as Africa celebrates its 'rising' billionaires in Strive Masiyiwa, Mohamed Ibrahim, Patrice Moetsepe, Aliko Dangote and Salim Bakhresa, should we still continue taking solace in a mantra that means little to the bulk of our populace?
As a political leader myself my heart bleeds to know that Africa still lags behind in political advancement. As ISIS makes inroads into Libya and Kizza Besigye being under siege by the Ugandan despot Yoweri Museveni, Burundi's Pierre Nkurunziza has not stopped killing his people while Joseph Kabila continues to harass opposition leader Moise Katumbi. Mozambique will struggle to attain total peace as long as the concerns of Afonso Dhlakama are not fully addressed. In South Africa, apart from the widening income disparities, are the punch ups between EFF and ANC members the 'new' form of Parliamentary democracy? World Energy Outlook postulates that Sub-Saharan Africa has now become the most electricity poor region in the world even though cell phone statistics put mobile phone penetration at sixty-seven percent of Africa's 1.4 billion population. My humble opinion is that unless Africa embraces genuine social democratic values that respect political diversity, the Africa Rising mantra remains a conundrum, actually, a delusion that might as well lead us to an Africa that is tumbling.
The images of Africans seeking to escape the scourge of being on the African continent and drowning in boats bound for Europe are permanently etched on our minds, never mind those of our young women sold into modern day sexual slavery in the Middle East.We tire of the slogans and cliches on African Renaissance which lives only in conference rooms and seminars. During this entire past week, progressive Africans on the continent have been bombarded with the gospel of Africa's so-called renaissance. There are some who go further and say the continent has moved, in leaps and bounds - from pre-Kwame Nkrumah colonial malaise into the new age of development prosperity. Inevitably, Zimbabwe has not been spared this masochist deluge, mostly driven by ZANU PF toxic propaganda machinery attempting to cover tracks of thirty-six years of clueless governance incompetence.
It is not clear who coined the term 'Africa Rising', popularised as a title of an IMF conference hosted by Mozambique in 2014. However, writer Hadassah Egbedi insists the term is of no African provenance but created by 'a well-meaning Western journalist'. Bitange Ndemo adds intrigue to this mystery: "When the term was coined initially in 2000, it described the rapid economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa, and the belief that the growth trajectory would be sustained." As I see it, when it comes to the 'Africa Rising' narrative, there are those who choose to ignore perennial violators of social, economic and political rights - the rogue 'democracies' of Africa like Zimbabwe, Uganda, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo and Swaziland, who incidentally tend to shout loudest about this false narrative.
However, I am the first to admit that considering the state of Africa at the inception of the African Union in May 1963, we have made headway in embracing education and technology – in some cases like Botswana, South Africa, Zambia and Nigeria – truly effective democracy.
The continent boasts some of the most sophisticated infrastructure, as some companies like Dangote, DeBeers and Econet have made inroads into western stock markets. Some of the world's finest universities - Cape Town ranked 120 and Makerere 500 out of 800 - are in Africa, as the continent even exports its best human capital to the world's leading institutions and companies. Zimbabwean Fadzai Gwaradzimba is the United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Safety and Security while Andrew Bvumbe was appointed alternate executive director World Bank for African Group 1 constituency for the African region. Some of the best African soccer players in Europe's top leagues were/are African – Samuel Etoo, George Weah, Peter Ndlovu, Emmanuel Adebayor, Didier Drogba, Seydou Keita, Benni McCarthy, Zenadine Zidane and of course, Benjamin Mwaruwaru and Yaya Toure of Manchester City FC. On the artistic scene, there are dozens of Africans who have shaken the entertainment world – musician Youssou N'dour; Actors Edi Gathegi and Lupita Nyong'o of Kenya, our very own Thandi Newton and South Africa's Charlize Theron with numerous Hollywood accolades under her belt.
And yet weighed against Africa's economic and governance misery, these 'risings' are small drops in an ocean of poverty, food insecurity and wars that stalk Africa. Our continent is home to some of the largest informal settlements on the planet – a reflection of the skewed priorities that our governments have. East Africa has unleashed millions of displaced persons from unending conflicts in South Sudan and Somalia – with Kenya recently threatening to close the Dadaab refugee camp home to almost half a million Somalis now infiltrated by Al Shabaab. Almost twenty thousand people have been murdered by Boko Haram in Nigeria with thousands more displaced. Zimbabwe itself has three to four million of its citizens who have fled the brutality of Robert Mugabe's archaic dictatorship. And all this is happening under the 'supervision' of the African Union!
The massive migration of Africans escaping violence and poverty across the Mediterranean Sea is another strong indicator that something is terribly wrong in our continent. The International Organisation for Migration reported that nearly 2 000 people were killed while travelling by sea from Libya to Italy in 2014, with reports that every single day there are corpses off these boats.
Apart from a few countries out of the 54 in our continent, the human development index (HDI) is on the wrong side of the scale. United Nations and its agencies no longer just consider gross domestic product (GDP) as the only measure of 'development'.
According to richestlifestyle.com, HDI is a standard way of measuring the well-being of the people of a country. It is a comparative measure of literacy, life expectancy and standard of living. HDI is used to measure the impact of the economic policies on the quality of life of its people. Seychelles is right at the top of the list… "having met most of the Millennium Development Goals... The country has very good infrastructure. It has six airports with paved runways and eight airports with unpaved runways."
Some reports say Saharan Africa still accounts for 38 percent of global neonatal deaths, however with under -five deaths having fallen by almost forty percent. Although the continent still exhibits strong real GDP growth rates of between four to six percent, Zimbabwe's indices are in the negative. Actually, as already mentioned, GDP is not necessarily a sign of good economic health.
Some African countries (Sudan -520 000, Egypt -680 000, Angola and Algeria -1.9 million, Libya -1.6 million and Nigeria -2.5 million) are said to be producing more barrels of oil per day than ever before, resulting in proliferation of highways, skyscrapers and shiny shopping malls. However, this has not reduced poverty because of lack of beneficiation, corruption and externalisation. We ourselves have experienced the 'resource curse' as three million Zimbabweans face starvation, five million are unemployed and almost all our infrastructure has collapsed – yet ZANU PF cronies spirited fifteen billion dollars-worth of diamonds out of the country in the last five years! We have absolutely nothing to show for our share of the sixty-billion-dollar worth of foreign direct investment into Africa the last ten years because ZANU PF runs a battery of repulsive economic policies.
And so as Africa celebrates its 'rising' billionaires in Strive Masiyiwa, Mohamed Ibrahim, Patrice Moetsepe, Aliko Dangote and Salim Bakhresa, should we still continue taking solace in a mantra that means little to the bulk of our populace?
As a political leader myself my heart bleeds to know that Africa still lags behind in political advancement. As ISIS makes inroads into Libya and Kizza Besigye being under siege by the Ugandan despot Yoweri Museveni, Burundi's Pierre Nkurunziza has not stopped killing his people while Joseph Kabila continues to harass opposition leader Moise Katumbi. Mozambique will struggle to attain total peace as long as the concerns of Afonso Dhlakama are not fully addressed. In South Africa, apart from the widening income disparities, are the punch ups between EFF and ANC members the 'new' form of Parliamentary democracy? World Energy Outlook postulates that Sub-Saharan Africa has now become the most electricity poor region in the world even though cell phone statistics put mobile phone penetration at sixty-seven percent of Africa's 1.4 billion population. My humble opinion is that unless Africa embraces genuine social democratic values that respect political diversity, the Africa Rising mantra remains a conundrum, actually, a delusion that might as well lead us to an Africa that is tumbling.
Source - MDC President Professor Welshman Ncube
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