Two years ago, enthusiasm for commercial opportunities in Africa was immense. Sections of the financial press then—and still now—enthused uncritically about a continent experiencing high rates of economic growth. This is sometimes called the “Africa Rising” scenario, referring to the idea that Africa represents an emerging economic area in something like the same way that south-east Asia did perhaps twenty-five years ago.   

Africa as a whole continues to show impressively high rates of economic growth and some other signs of what are often seen as economic virtue. Nevertheless,I think that the last two years have shown why we cannot therefore assume that the continent has now “taken off,” or “turned the corner,” or any of the other clichés so often applied to Africa. 

The idea of development in its modern sense became fashionable after 1945. In the 1950s and 1960s, which was of course the golden age of Africa’s independence, development was the subject of earnest works in economics, sociology and political science. Academics, planners and technocrats generally assumed that true development takes place in phases that can be identified by social scientists, as low-level agricultural economies evolve and people move to towns to provide the labour force for industrial production. This is what happened in countries that developed early, in Europe and the USA, and it is broadly what happened also in parts of Asia that are now prosperous.

However, it is now clear that Africa’s high levels of economic growth, even if they are sustained for a lengthy period, are not leading to the sort of economic and political development that has been regarded for the last 60 years or so as a standard model. There is little evidence in Africa’s recent growth of the sort of structural change that development theorists might regard as desirable, notably a degree of industrialization. The region’s impressive growth in the years from 1995 to 2005 and its recovery from the global financial crisis of 2008-09 were driven primarily by new mineral discoveries, rising commodity prices and the strength of domestic demand. A sober view is that, in the absence of the right sort of structural change, it is doubtful whether sufficient growth can be sustained for Africa as a whole to reach middle-income levels by 2025.¹

Moreover, there are reasons to question whether high growth rates will translate into much that can plausibly be called development in terms of nationwide health care and other social indices. This is likely to happen only if economic growth is accompanied by suitable policies implemented fully by states that have the means to realise their ambition.  And even states like these need luck. 

Some of the literature that has emerged on the Africa Rising scenario is very dubious.  In the worst cases, articles and books look like nothing more than hype by financial firms wishing to encourage investment in one of the few parts of the world offering high returns —for now. I have to include in this category some texts by the influential economist Jim O’Neill, the former chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management and former head of global economics research at Goldman Sachs, who is most famous for coining the acronym BRICS to describe Brazil, Russia, India and China, now joined by South Africa as the core of a new economic bloc that is shifting power away from the older economies of the G7. In the last two years Dr O’Neill has coined another acronym, MINT, standing for Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey. He considers that Nigeria, on the basis of its young, expanding population and booming consumption, could become a new China.²

I take the point that surprising and difficult-to-predict things do happen in every generation. But the list of impediments to Nigeria developing in the manner of China is intimidatingly long. We may take electricity supply as an example.  Nigeria produces less electricity through its national generation system than the Republic of Ireland. Over half of Nigeria’s 175 million people receive no electricity at all, unless they buy their own generator. Americans consume 100 times more energy per head than Nigerians. Not least, although Nigeria is a major oil producer, fuel for cars is often in short supply due to the chronic shortages of petroleum products coming from the country’s refineries.  This state of affairs is largely due to corruption, although this is hardly an adequate word to describe a system in which, according to the  prominent academic  Ike Okonta,  politics in Nigeria is “a struggle for control of the country’s oil largesse, which, once secured in the form of loot, is used to further and consolidate political ends.”³

Things may change, of course —but not necessarily in a benign sense.  This same Nigeria, that is sometimes described as a potential China, is also home to the Islamist movement Boko Haram, that now rules substantial territory in the north-east of the country and has declared itself a caliphate. 

Anyone contemplating the future has to consider the fact that booming Lagos is situated in the same country as violence-torn Borno State. The point I am making here, using Nigeria as an example, is that a fixation on economic growth has to be considered in a broader context.  This is true not only of Nigeria, now Africa’s largest economy, but everywhere. However, the global context is particularly unfamiliar and unpredictable.  Specifically in regard to Africa, while there are  dynamic metropolitan areas that give rise to talk of Africa Rising, there are also large swathes of territory where the  rule  of the state hardly exists  or is imposed with difficulty and, often, by means of  violence. If this is so in  Nigeria, it is also  true of Kenya, another major African economy, but  also a country that includes  a coastal region  and a capital city that  are deeply disturbed by the effects of war and poverty in neighbouring Somalia. Nigeria and Kenya are among Africa’s best economic performers. But in thinking about the future of the continent, we have to also bear in mind places like the Central African Republic and South Sudan where the prospects of a strong and efficient state developing are close to zero. 

There is, therefore, an urgent need for us to think our way out of obsolete ideas of development. In the first instance, we need to reflect on what development really means in light of current realities that include climate change, a world population of seven billion and still expanding, a decline in US power, the rise of China and the incidence of so-called failed states.  There is not time at this point to go into detail, but I note that recent United Nations documents emphasize what they call “human development.”  Notions of human development incorporate all aspects of individuals’ well-being, from their health status to their economic and political freedom.⁴ One definition of human development used by the UN Development Programme  is that it “is about creating an environment in which people can develop their full potential and lead productive, creative lives in accord with their needs and interests.”⁵ Speaking of people’s “needs and interests,” as they define them themselves, takes us a long way from technocratic views of development that, on balance, continue to dominate. It suggests a more inclusive notion of development. 

This evolution is why new thinking is required.  For present purposes and in the present company, which includes some distinguished visitors from Africa; I may emphasise the need for Africans as well as others to engage in some fresh thinking.  It is a necessity if African countries   are to make use of the financial benefits of the last twenty years and to face a world that in the future might be even more harsh to those who cannot compete than it has been in the past.  Christopher Clapham, a well-known professor of politics and international relations, asserts that “It is not only the Western mindset on Africa that needs to be decolonised, but also the African one: the grand project of Africa’s intellectual elite has overwhelmingly been to avoid responsibility for the problems of African development.”  He suggests that “[t]h e lesson both of Asia and Latin America is that the path to change begins in the minds of its indigenous thinkers.”⁶

These are themes too big to dissect or even address adequately right now.  Let us then  debate Africa, whether or not we think it  works, with the knowledge that  some of our assumptions or even deeply-held beliefs  about the world we are living in  are in need of reconsideration. 

By Prof. Dr. Stephen Ellis
Senior researcher, African Studies Center.

1. John Page, “Can Africa Industrialize?” Journal of African Economies, 21, suppl 2 (2012), pp. ii86 - ii124.

2  “Nigeria: Africa’s Hope,”  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03p824m [accessed 8 October 2014]. 

3  “Nigeria: Chronicle of a Dying State,” Current History (May 2005), p.205. 

4  Cf. World Bank, What Is Development?www.worldbank.org/depweb/beyond/beyondco/beg_01.pdf

[accessed 8 October 2014] 

5 See e.g. http://www.ug.undp.org/content/uganda/en/home/ourwork/humandevelopment/successstories/Sample_Success_Story_2/  [accessed 8 October 2014] 

6 In a review of Stephen Ellis, Season of Rains: Africa in the World, in  International Affairs  87, 6 (2011), p. 1548.