adminThe newly independent states boasted new constitutions, new universities and new social and economic plans for growth supported by strong development aid programmes and optimistic populations.
Today the atmosphere is much less optimistic. Rather than planning for tomorrow, most Africans, if not also their governments, are more concerned with getting by today. Overseas aid has degenerated into a network of lotteries where African governments and NGOs scramble to fit into funding priorities set by Washington Brussels and now China and India.
Few are the African governments and local NGOs that do not feel dependent on friends from overseas. Foreign direct investment increases, but few governments manage to guide the income into sustainable local social and economic development.
Even Africa’s civil society, where local initiative, self-help and energy have been the most visible, is denigrated by Africa’s intellectuals as being too focused on
their international donors rather than on responding to the needs and priorities of African communities. Given the patterns set over the last 60 years and the situation today, what can Africa anticipate over the next 20 years?
More of the same? If it is not to be more of the same, what economic and political processes need to change?
Tomorrow’s Africa
The general trajectory of change in Africa over the last 60 years has to a large degree set parameters that will govern what it can expect over the next 20 years.
Such a premise provides little to suggest that future political and economic change will come in other than uneven and modest increments. For some countries the change will be progressive, while others may have little to show. Although arbitrary, the lens of the next 20 years is a useful timeframe. It is short enough to be constrained by trends and factors that are already visible.
It is also a substantial enough in the sense that in 20 years the Africans born today will be taking on their adult roles. What is the world that Africa’s leaders are planning for them? What can be predicted and for what does Africa need to prepare over the next 20 years?
By 2033, it is reasonable to expect that Africa will have become an even more important source of the world’s minerals, resulting in a strong, even dominant, presence of large and small, legal and illegal, extractive and agricultural industries, financed largely by external funds and protected by national officials as needed sources of national income. As today, the economic, political, environmental and social impact of these industries will remain problematic.
Countries that are truly able to harness the income from these resources in ways that contribute to the general welfare of the country have the chance to be in the progressive scenario.
Those that are unable to harness the income and to use it fruitfully will inevitably fall into the regressive segment.
As it is also likely that Africa’s mineral and agricultural resources sector will be the major source of most governments’ revenue in the next 20 years, success or failure in benefiting from these resources will have a serious impact on each government’s ability to govern and to provide services to its citizens.
Judging by the last 20 years, growth in other economic sectors including, unfortunately, traditional agriculture and especially energy will be modest and will absorb rather than generate national income.
International consumer businesses such as Coca-Cola and communications’ corporations will continue to find markets in Africa. Other corporations from Brazil, China and India will join them. Some African countries will be successful in developing local industries but even the latter will be susceptible to acquisition by their international counterparts. — Pambazuka News.
- To be continued
Online Reporter