Africa is rising but to where and how?

Sub-Saharan Africa has persistently occupied the lowest rungs of global development. On almost all socioeconomic indicators, the continent significantly lags behind the rest of the world. In recent years, however, there has been attempts to drum up Africa as an ‘emerging lion.’
In both academic and popular debates, the general commentary has moved in the direction of positive assessment and optimistic projection – Africa is rising. From a capitalist stand point, Africa is considered the remaining main frontier of unexploited markets with a huge potential for experimenting with product innovations and virgin investment opportunities.
Presenting a positive image of Africa is most welcome for a continent that was for long the object of misleading and salacious portrayals, cynical caricatures and false constructions. Imageries of a dark continent without a history were the signature profiling by western scholars in the period before Africa was forcefully and brutally occupied by imperial powers.
The portrait of a dark continent gave way to representations of savagery and backward people in urgent need of civilisation, the leitmotif of European missionaries and ultimately the colonisation of the continent.
Colonial occupation was not just physical and institutional, it was also, perhaps more insidiously, mental and intellectual. More than 30 years ago, literary scholar Ngugi wa Thiong’o perceptively underscored the lasting and debilitating impact of the colonial project on African thought and knowledge production. Little has changed.
But the ‘Africa rising’ narrative sits on a shake foundation. First, African economies have undoubtedly registered modest growth in recent years but the growth is either superficial or it is not happening in the sectors that matter the most.
Second, the growing tendency to paint a rosy picture of the continent masks Africa’s continued marginal position in the global capitalist structures of power and domination. Lastly, the economic strains and stresses afflicting, especially urban populations, have generated a hungering for quick solutions and contributed to a new wave of populist politics.
Questioning the narrative of a ‘rising Africa’ is not because Africa is not rising, but to what end and with what benchmarks? Images of shopping malls, coffee shops and skyscrapers are used to depict a continent ‘rising,’ while glossing over the fact that the majority of African peoples live in rural areas far away from the shopping malls and coffee shops in cities and towns.
GDP growth figures are often cited to underscore the roaring lion, but such figures tell us nothing about the quality of life of citizens or societal harmony and the positioning in the structure of the global economy.
Yet, even if we were to take GDP as a measure of a ‘rising Africa,’ the record is not as outstanding as it has been hyped.
The services sectors, which have been the largest source of growth – primarily telecommunications, banking, insurance, leisure and hospitality – are dominated by transnational (often speculative) hot capital that enjoys the freedom to repatriate profits without making long-term physical investments.
The more risky manufacturing sectors have attracted limited investment yet this is precisely where Africa’s economies need a leap. It is a trifle misleading to think that a continent that has remained the least-industrialised can somehow parachute itself and compete in the post-industrial global market place of services.
The services sectors are largely consumptive and not productive.
Rather than export processing zones and industrial parks, the ‘rising Africa’ has sprawling urban real estate and hotel complexes in Kampala and Luanda, arguably from illicit money, and coffee-shop chains in Kigali and Addis Ababa that have little capital investment.
The ever elusive foreign investor, the one who rulers like Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni are ever chasing after, are attracted to invest in real estate, leisure and hospitality, coffee and fast-food chains, where they can easily disinvest because the costs of doing so are minimal compared to manufacturing and value addition ventures.
Until African economies marshal the infrastructure to power manufacturing and propel real productive sectors, growth will remain ephemeral and superficial.