A Billion Reasons to Believe in Africa: Myth or Reality?
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Let me be clear: I don’t drink coke. The Coca-Cola Company has not offered me any incentive, monetary or otherwise, to indulge their craving for strategic product placement. My fascination with Coca Cola derives from the creativity and originality of its advertisement, which fascination dates back to my childhood.
Curiously, however, I find the advertisement in question to be one of the least innovative and effective, and this for two reasons. First, although Coca-Cola alleges a billion reasons “in fact,” it offers no more than a handful; they include music, dance, Mobile phones, beauty pageant, Nelson Mandela…. Second, the colourful billion-reasons billboards strategically planted in cities across Africa present a montage of Africa in stark dissonance with stereotypical imagery of the continent. Look at it this way: smiling and well-nourished Africans in affluent, safe and secure environment – where in Africa, you might query? In which Africa? Africa of the BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera? Africa of Al Quaeda, Al Shabaab, Boko Haram … Africa of M23?
The daily diet of headline news stuffed with plentiful servings of war, violence, corruption, rape and similar vices from the so-called “dark continent” bears contrary testimony to the tantalising promise of the billion-reasons campaign to lift the burden of stigma and enigma that hangs over the continent. It might be conjectured that Coca-Cola speaks but figuratively. Yet, to allege a billion reasons only metaphorically is to run the risk of reinforcing widespread incredulity and pessimism about Africa. If, in fact, there are a billion reasons to believe in Africa, credibility demands our painstaking effort to enumerate and name them.
The advertisement in question serves a useful, dual purpose. Tactfully, it combines two vital reasons why some still perceive a glimmer of hope in Africa. First, the continent’s economic potential. Imagine a billion Africans drinking a can of coke daily, as alleges one of Coca Cola’s YouTube postings! That would translate into a phenomenal windfall for the Company. Second, it alludes to a religious idiom, belief, which elicits questions about the status and function of religion on the continent, whose spectacular growth is attested by multiple statistics.
The colonial enterprise of myth-making and racial stereotyping continues to yield a repertoire of nicknames and aliases gratuitously conferred upon Africa. Without exception, such nicknames denote primitiveness and savagery – from Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” to Henry Morton Stanley’s “Dark Continent” and The Economist magazine’s “Hopeless Continent.” This patronizing pastime of name-calling or nicknaming Africa reinforces a stereotypical thinking embedded deeply in mythical colonial portrayal of the continent’s complex identity and history. This is what The Coca-Cola Company invites us to counteract with brighter, more hopeful images and narratives of Africa.
If The Coca Cola Company sees a billion reasons to believe in Africa, such reasons cannot be detached from anticipated real or perceived economic dividend. Many experts and organizations share this belief in the economic possibilities and potential of Africa.
In 2000 (May 11th), The Economist magazine christened Africa “the hopeless continent.” Interestingly, however, in the intervening years that followed this stigmatization, the magazine has revised and reversed its appraisal of the fortunes of the African continent twice: first in 2011 (December 3rd – 9th) and again in 2013 (March 2nd). Both editions painted a picture of “Africa Rising,” “Africa Aspiring” to greater heights as “a hopeful continent.”2
The catalogue of signs and grounds for this unusual about-turn and its measured optimism is impressive: drums of civil wars and internecine conflicts falling silent, laboured but reassuring strides towards democratization, infrastructural development of unprecedented scope, mobile telecommunication boom, rising income levels and middle class, falling disease rates, resurging life expectancy, improved enabling environment for investment and business, declining child mortality rates, growing foreign direct investment…. It is a dizzying accumulation of data in support of the claim that “Africa is the world’s fastest-growing continent just now”3 and that “something fundamental has changed” on the continent.4
Whereas in the past expert analyses dredged a reservoir of grim statistics to demonize Africa as a moribund continent, today, myriad specialist reports find reasons to lionize the continent 5– in much the same way that Asian economies acquired their stripes as “tigers” – and tout the status and significance of Africa as an unstoppable force in the phenomenal “rise of the south.”6
We ought not to overplay the economic prospects of the continent. And here is why I elect to be somewhat parsimonious in my attitude towards glowing statistics of Africa’s economic development. To put it simply, development is not a single strand; it is a multiplicity of interconnected and interacting strands relative to the economic needs, political opportunities, cultural creativity and social well-being of people. To rely on one strand alone is to stake our belief in Africa on a tenuous foundation, making us liable for telling “a single story,” a pitfall that award-winning Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie incessantly warns against. Besides, Amartya Sen has demonstrated convincingly the futility of relying exclusively on macroeconomics as yardstick for measuring development.7
If we content ourselves with judging the quality of life in Africa only by statistical variables we run the risk of creating an economic avatar, where only a few possess the means to acquire and enjoy a life of perks and privileges, while expediently shielded and distanced from the daily drudgery of millions of dispossessed and impoverished Africans. Sen states the argument clearly: “Gross domestic product (GDP) is much easier to see and measure than the quality of human life that people have. But human well-being and freedom, and their connection with fairness and justice in the world, cannot be reduced simply to the measurement of GDP and its growth rate….”8
For those who think only in absolute economic terms, Africa is rising. But, why, we must ask loud and clear, why are so many young Africans fleeing a continent that we are told is among the fastest-growing in the world only for them to be washed up as thousands of cadavers on the shores of Lampedusa and accorded state funeral in Sicily?
Economic predictions that offer a positive assessment and project a hopeful future of Africa raise two concerns. First, the sparse translation of these benefits into improved standard of living for the most number of people. This reality of a gaping chasm between the rich and the poor represents a social iniquity that Paul VI decried 46 years ago in his revolutionary encyclical, Populorum Progressio (nos. 8 and 29). Second, we may not overlook the fact that, besides protestations of a genuine catalyst of belief, Africa’s economic resurgence also evokes the spectre of a modern-day scramble for Africa by local and international agents. Why does the rest of the world really, fervently believe in the economic potential of this erstwhile “hopeless continent” and who is benefitting from the continent’s revival?
I would like indulge a brief parenthesis to examine more critically the prevailing orthodoxy of belief in Africa’s economic renaissance by comparing and contrasting general attitudes towards the continent in matters of development by the West, using as convenient model the United States of America, and by the East, using the People’s Republic of China, as another exemplar. My aim is to understand not why but how the rest of the world believes in Africa.
A particularity of what I shall, for the sake of argument, label “the Western system” is that it operates under the banner of “compassion and ethics” as primary motivating factors in its dealings with Africa, hence the tendency to focus predominantly on issues of welfare, social empowerment and ethics. The concomitant discourse covers fields as disparate as same-sex marriage, gay rights, election monitoring, governance, capital punishment, HIV/AIDS, malaria, Tuberculosis, child mortality and maternal health. Typically, historically, this system disburses grants and aid that require an increasingly complex portfolio of due diligence to secure and account for. Besides, the size and consistency of humanitarian largess are predicated implicitly and explicitly on Africa’s performance vis-à-vis a pre-established scorecard of ethical issues.
This model has recorded phenomenal success in improving the lives of millions of Africans. The frequently cited examples show how polio has been all but eradicated in Africa, how access to Anti-Retroviral drugs continues to rise, even as malaria infection rates, child mortality and Female Genital Cutting decline. Does this approach satisfy Africa’s vast developmental needs?
For want of a better term, let’s call the second approach “the Eastern system.” Its particularity could be labeled as “business and infrastructure.” This system adopts as issues for priority exchange in commodities and infrastructural development. The popular code of this system is oftentimes encapsulated in the innocuous designation “friendship”. Visitors to sub-Saharan Africa may notice temporary and permanent monuments and billboards at roundabouts and pedestrian bridges proclaiming, as one author has phrased it: “The Chinese Are Our Friends”!9
Unlike the Western system, the Eastern system operates the so-called Angola Model or “oil-for-infrastructure” arrangement. A more accurate term for this arrangement would be “trade by barter.”10 Zambian-born economist Dambisa Moyo’s assessment of this model as a “win-win” situation xxxiv seems to me facile and naïve. The visibility of the infrastructural outcomes of this model lies beyond doubt: the Chinese build railway lines, supply locomotives and wagons; they build airports, seaports, highways, bridges and hydro-electric power plants… in exchange for commodities and mining concessions. Yet, when it comes to dealing with Africa, mystery surrounds the relative value of commodities vis-à-vis infrastructural development. In other words, how do you quantify the value of a mineral concession right relative to say a road or a hospital? Besides, in this Eastern system, the commodities on offer are not restricted to traditional energy needs or mineral resources. Thousands of acres of arable land are being ceded to foreign nations such as China, India and South Korea as economic development concession whose direct benefit to the people forced to give up meager but hugely symbolic ancestral tracts of land remains questionable.
In assessing the impact of these two systems of economic transaction between Africa and the rest of the world, some analysts commonly assume that the Eastern system is currently delivering more wealth and opportunities for Africa, along with – of course – friendship and cooperation. Yet it is difficult to shake the belief that the Eastern system shows little interest in governance and human rights issues, and only pays lip service to environmental concerns.11
Evidently, there are exceptions to this broad categorization and mixing of motives happens concurrently. Furthermore, both systems would prefer trade and investment as more accurate tags for their motives and objectives in Africa. Notwithstanding, my point is simple: whether from the East or from the West, those who profess belief in Africa under the banner of “development” do so on the basis of entrenched economic and geopolitical self-interest. Belief in Africa comes at a price to Africans. I am convinced of the futility of a certain brand of scholarship that narrows the analysis of Africa’s challenges to a limited set of historical issues, such as slavery, colonialism and the Cold War. I say this without any intention of denigrating the insidious effects, past and present, of these evil schemes on the life and psyche Africans. I am convinced that those who make belief in Africa a difficult proposition are primarily people of our own race. I agree that the assessment of Africa’s economic fortunes ought not to be disconnected from structures, such as leadership and governance, that control and allocate its dividends, which structures, as I shall now demonstrate, surreptitiously undermine belief in Africa.
I am reminded of a proverb from Benin City, Nigeria, which goes thus: “The insect says it can sing and dance, but it is the chicken that prevents it from displaying its skills in broad daylight.” Here’s the point: many are the homegrown agents that prevent Africa from realizing its full potential. I know of a country where only four out of 10 children attend school: Somalia. I know of another country that holds the unenviable record of the largest number of out-of-school children, at 10.5 million children and counting: Nigeria. The statistics of out-of-school Somali children may be excusable, considering prevailing conditions of instability and insecurity that have bedeviled that most failed state on earth. But,Nigeria? The difference lies in leadership or the lack of it. This reference to out-of-school children is but one example of the calamitous consequences that the culpable ineptitude of many African leaders can have on the lot of an entire continent.
Speaking of which, there is no shortage of leadership credential in Africa. Take the example of The Elders: an assemblage of iconic “global leaders who work together for peace and human rights.”12 Two Africans form part of this august body of twelve; another two are honorary Elders, one of whom was the world’s most archetypal icon of leadership, Madiba Nelson Mandela, who, coincidentally, was celebrated by The Coca Cola Company as the world’s most admired person and, therefore, duly recorded as one vital reason to believe in Africa. Shriveled and incapacitated by ill-health and decades of struggle and sacrifice, Mandela can seem a study in undiluted selflessness genuinely dedicated to the cause and service of humanity; a man possessed of a rare leadership DNA that seems alien to many others who usurp exalted positions in Africa but lack credibility, conscience, compassion and character. Mandela stands – a lone icon and a unique reason for believing in Africa – surrounded by a cohort of charlatans parading as heads of state, presidents and prime ministers, who are bereft of moral matter, skilled in the art of manipulation, impunity and kleptocracy, and possessed of a conscience so amoral it could easily serve as substitute matter for Teflon. Such is the totality of their inurement to shame and scandal that even the minutest speck of morality struggles to stick on their conscience.
Names, they say, bring division. If we are allowed to name Nelson Mandela (RSA), Kofi Annan (Ghana), Graça Machel (RSA/Mozambique), Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (Liberia), Joyce Banda (Malawi), Wangari Maathai (Kenya), Desmond Tutu (RSA), Pedro Pires (Cape Verde), Festus Mogae (Botswana), Joaquim Chissano (Mozambique) … as reasons for believing in Africa, fairness obliges that we also name those among us who undermine belief in Africa: Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe), Yaya Jameh (Gambia), King Mswati III (Swaziland), Omar el-Bashir (Sudan), Andry Rojoelina (Madagascar), Paul Biya (Cameroon), Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo (Guinea), Denis Sassou Nguesso (Congo), Isaias Afewerki (Eritrea)…. I could continue. The sight of the socio-economic carnage and political havoc that this latter and lesser group of men – they are almost always men – have visited on their respective countries beggars belief and should allow us a better appreciation of the challenge that The Mo Ibrahim Foundation faces year in year out trying to find a worthy honoree for its lucrative Prize for Achievement in African Leadership. Just listen to a recent BBC news headline: “For the fourth time in five years, the world's most valuable individual prize – the Mo Ibrahim prize for good governance in Africa – has gone unclaimed!”
The ramifications of the chronic leadership deficit that bedevils Africa are serious and momentous. They militate against a key driver of development and transformation, namely, “A strong, proactive and responsible state [that] develops policies for both public and private sectors—based on a long-term vision and leadership, shared norms and values, and rules and institutions that build trust and cohesion.”13
Oftentimes, Africa’s problems are categorized as structural.14 This label is not a stealth code for attenuating culpability for Africa’s challenges. Speaking as a Catholic, I believe that structures don’t go to confession, people do! And therein lies the problem: the people who govern Africa are an integral part of the continent’s trials and tribulations.
By Agbonkhianmeghe E. Orobator
Fr Agbonkhianmeghe E. Orobator is an eminent author, theologian and lecturer from Nigeria. Excerpted from the Pope Paul VI Memorial Lecture 2013
1http://www.coca-colacompany.com/stories/coca-cola-offers-consumers-reasons-to-believe.
2 TIME magazine has twice published cover articles with the title ‘Africa rising’ in March 1998 and December 2012.
4 Blair, “Africa is now more peaceful.”
5 The McKinsey Global Institute, “Lions on the move: The progress and potential of African economies” (June 2010), http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/africa/lions_on_the_move.
6 The 2013 Human Development Report, “The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World” (March 2013), http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/librarypage/hdr/human-development-report-2013/.
7 Ibid
8 Ibid
9 Dambisa Moyo, Dead Aid: Why Aid is no working and how there is a better way for Africa (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009), 103.
10 Moyo, Dead Aid, 111; Winner Take All: China’s race for resources and what it means for the world (New York: Basic Books, 2012), 82, 96.
11 Moyo, Winner Take All, 157.
12 http://www.theelders.org/about.
13 Amartya Sen, in “The 2013 Human Development Report (Summary),” 5.
14 Moyo, Winner Take All, 184.