Africa – no more the 'Ailing Giant'

December 21, 2016, 8:08 pm

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir (C) vowed to crush any new anti-regime protests as the authorities did three years ago - AFP

But extreme impoverishment is not the lot of many of Africa's countries, including Ethiopea itself. Some of these countries could be easily categorized as emerging economies on account of their growth. Sections of rural Africa are experiencing a dynamism never seen before and if strong redistributive justice measures are put in place by the governments concerned, Africa would soon match South East Asia, for example, in economic development.

At a casual glance, current political and socio-economic developments on the African continent may seem to correspond to the mainly Western stereotypical rendering of that vast land of promise over the decades. Bloody, prolonged ethnic and tribal wars, military coups and counter-coups, political and military strongmen who never part with power, political personality cults, botched democracies....these are usually seen as the hallmarks of Africa. And, to be sure, Africa is even today not free of these 'bizarre' characteristics.

There are the contemporary situations in Zimbabwe, the Congo, Southern Sudan, Gambia and Mali, to name just a few such countries of Africa, which seem to be fully and graphically substantiating what sections of the Western media, along with some Western writers and political scientists, have been seeing as Africa over the years. Studied superficially, Africa is indeed novelist Joseph Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness'. It does not seem to be coming out of the multifaceted crises that have been plaguing it in particularly post-independence times.

The minds of perceptive observers are certain to go back to Algerian political scientist and psychiatrist Frantz Fanon's ground-breaking and seminal political tract and commentary, 'The Wretched of the Earth'. The book was written in the heyday of African anti-colonial liberation struggles in the sixties and going by current realities, Fanon seems to have spoken prophetically about Africa's political class. Rather than take anti-colonial liberation struggles to their logical conclusion in the form of people's empowerment in all its dimensions, the African political class, generally speaking, is tending to be self-aggrandizing and parasitic. This is true of many of Africa's political and military strongmen even today. Thus, Fanon continues to be profoundly important and one cannot understand African politics insightfully without having recourse to Fanon.

However, as an important 'aside' it could be said that Fanon's observations are true of almost the entirety of the developing world, or the one-time 'Third World', although he focuses mainly on Africa. Have South and South East Asia, for example, fared better than Africa in terms of political and economic development? How many vibrant, accountable democracies would one find in South Asia, for instance. It should be conceded that, barring a very few exceptions, Asian 'democracies' have failed to institute and implement constitutional provisions that ensure equality in its many dimensions. Sri Lanka is not among these exceptions.

Accordingly, Fanon continues to be important as far as Africa's post-independence political developments are concerned. Quite a few of Afrca's present rulers are self-serving, authoritarian and anti-democratic. Zimbabwe's Mugabe, Congo's Kabila and Gambia's Jammeh easily come to mind.

However, on the economic front some very interesting developments have taken place in Africa over the past 20 years or so that compel the observer to bemoan the fact that no true transition to democracy has taken place in many of these 'economic success stories' of the continent, that would enable the majority of Africans to enjoy a measure of empowerment, correctly understood.

To enable democracy to flourish on the African continent, conditions in the latter should enable, multi-party, freely and fairly elected, accountable democracies to come into being. In the absence of these features, popular political and economic empowerment could be said to be lagging in Africa.

Ideally, current economic liberalization measures in Africa should go in tandem with political liberalization to ensure complete democratic development on the continent. At present there exists a gap between the processes and this needs bridging through sensible, farseeing governance.

However, it could no longer be claimed that Africa is an 'Ailing Giant' of the world, on account of the economic vibrancy seen in some of its countries currently. Sections of world opinion were prone to see Africa as desperately poor and underdeveloped not so long ago. The catastrophic Ethiopean famines of the seventies and eighties, for example, were seen as symbolizing Africa's condition.

A study brought out by well known Indian economist Vijay Mahajan gives us all the relevant information on this African economic growth spurt. In a book titled 'RISE of Rural Consumers in Developing Countries – Harvesting 3 Billion Aspirations' (Published by SAGE Publications India Pvt. Ltd. - www.sagepub.in), Mahajan focuses on how rural regions of the developing world, including those in Africa, are unprecedently growing in economic terms.

One factor in this growth experience is the vast spread of the informal or 'shadow economy' among rural people. Rural dwellers have more cash in hand, and this is resulting in the expansion of a considerable consumer base in the rural areas of many developing countries. Some of the African cases in point are, Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Congo Democratic Republic, Uganda and Ethiopia.

One aspect of the informal economy is the inflow to developing countries of money earned abroad by the migrant labour of the respective countries. Currently these earnings stand at $ 440 billion. Such moneys lay the basis for a relatively prosperous rural consumer base which could keep an economy ticking in good health. Among other detailed relevant data provided by sources, such as the World Bank, Mahajan tabulates that Ethiopia's household consumption in 2014, as a percentage of its GDP, stood at 70.2. In 2015, it had 30.5 million mobile phone subscribers, 32 per cent of the country's population. Mobile phones are a great aid to economic growth, it is pointed out.

So, there's more than meets the eye in Africa. Economics usually drive politics and it is hoped that sensible governance will enable political liberalization to be in step with these positive changes in the economic sphere. However, it is time Africa is not seen through Western lenses in particular. The rest of the developing world would need to address this issue if it is put in place closer economic integration measures with Africa.