- AFRICA: A Global Economic Powerhouse

Africa - A global ecnomic powerhouse

The Slightest of Dents

Brain drain is usually a top of the list item on Africa’s lack of progress. This is one of the greatest of myths of all times. The quality of Africa’s human resource rivals the best in the world. Due to the draconian border restrictions by well-resourced countries, only a negligible percentage of people leave the continent. This number does not even make the slightest of dents on the quality and quantity of Africa’s collective human resource. The proud people of Africa refuse to be victims. They unceasingly push and work around the enormous odds stacked against the continent. One has to admit that it takes sheer amounts of brilliance, resilience, tenacity and a great deal of smarts…to keep the continent afloat under such severe conditions. With the restless, ever growing population of Africa – which is bursting at the seams with the richness of youth and dynamic energy – it is just a matter of time before the superficial barriers to Africa’s social and economic advancement are dismantled.

No Voluntary Give-Backs

Decades upon decades of reckless political leadership have greatly fueled Africa’s economic suppression and oppression. It has been, and continues to be a game of musical chairs consisting of irresolute, meek and greedy sell-outs; who readily submit to dictates that continue to curtail Africa’s progress. It allows insidious humans to scuttle efforts for a United Africa. For indeed divided, the continent keeps falling faster and further into oblivion. This leadership perpetrates the infiltration of the wholesomeness of each African’s fiercely-held proud culture with superficial values. It adamantly refuses to build Africa’s military and technological powers to stand up and defend and demand what rightfully belongs to the citizens of the continent. Africa’s founding fathers turn in their graves at this cowardly spectacle. Africa’s government leaders need to understand that because the stakes are high and the consequences are grave, there will be no voluntary give-backs from the holders of capital. In representing Africa, they must resolutely decline to have its wealth doled back as pitiable amounts of charity. This is a very bad deal.

The Nucleus

The human spirit refuses to be oppressed. History has proven time and again – and without fail – that systems built on prolonged and persistent unfairness and injustices eventually collapse. One way or another, Africa will claim its rightful status as a global economic powerhouse. For this to happen sooner rather than later, a nucleus of a formidable Pan-African leadership comprising of exceptional individuals must emerge.

This nucleus should attract individuals who have healthy attitudes for meaningful engagements to occur. They will have to be in it for the long haul – with great mental fortitude, resilience and resourcefulness. To let the best ideas bubble to the surface, they need to respect diversity including gender, religion, nationalities, tribe, age, culture, status or sexual orientation. Having a deep desire for Africa’s prosperity, owing their full allegiance to the continent, and striving for the highest levels of integrity are critical pre-requisites.

This leadership nucleus must use all the necessary means at its disposal to re-build Africa’s social and economic freedom. The format and structure it will take is a secondary issue that is up for debate. However, it will be of crucial importance to strike a global stance and seeks partnerships and collaborations which uphold the simple principles of fairness. In the same breath – for the sake of the continent’s prosperity…for the sake of Africa’s children…and for the sake of Africa’s current and future generations – the nucleus must lead the African people in systematically rejecting, denouncing and breaking all the existing structures that hold Africa back. It does not matter how long this process takes. The thing is to start. To paraphrase Mandela, it is an ideal that Africans must be prepared to die for. Yet again.

-ends-

Author Sheida Mutuku

Chief Executive Officer

Woodside Africa Group LLC

What really is holding Africa back from claiming its pride of place as a global economic powerhouse?  This question holds the trappings of an intricate puzzle. Africa has got the foundational ‘ingredients’ for this status to be accomplished with relative ease. Yet, the stark reality is hugely contradictory.

One Minute Longer

It is always a great disservice when the usual flagrant reasons are regurgitated as the cause of Africa’s economic misfortunes. The most commonly flaunted are fiscal tension, ineffective monetary policies, low expertise, leadership crisis, civil unrest and corruption.  These are surface issues, and are not unique to Africa. In good measure, they exist almost everywhere around the globe. But the critical mass of the world population has been exposed to blunt fallacies about the ineptitude of Africa to run its own affairs. What is usually left out is that the bedrock of the global financial system is built stunningly in favor of western countries. This renders even the most robust of economic reforms effected in Africa useless, or tepid at best. Bottomline, until the global financial architecture is redesigned, Africa will not get out of the economic rut. Over decades, a myriad of unsavory tactics have been employed to retain the status quo. One of the most deplorable tactics is the process of skillfully blending truths with untruths, and ingeniously presenting these deliberate misconceptions as facts.  The ensuing literature is studied and adopted by even the most enlightened of Africans as gospel truth; who in turn reinforce the same misrepresentations to captive audiences, including their children. Other distinguished Africans of high influence – with a very clear grasp of the underlying dynamics – have simply chosen to be gagged by golden handcuffs, oblivious to the far-reaching destruction caused by their loud silence and/or inaction. Often overlooked is the fact that they will not have to be enslaved one minute longer, if only they concertedly worked towards securing the social and economic might of the continent.

A Murderous Chokehold

The barrier to Africa’s economic emancipation is not poverty, which is but an illusion that has been hard wired into the African pysche. The hindrance to Africa’s greatness is perpetrated by institutions created from the aforementioned financial misarchitecture. Through the facade of global cohesion, the onerous purpose of these institutions is to protect and maintain the continuous flow of wealth towards western countries. At whatever cost.  It is about employing underhand bullying tactics to maintain  economic superiority.

Rwanda was kicked off AGOA for declining to be a dumping ground of second hand clothes imported from the USA. Under the late President Mugabe’s leadership, Zimbabwe’s economy was obliterated overnight. He had the nerve to correct a gross colonial injustice through the restoration of stolen land back to the black population from a handful of white farmers. The blame for the ensuing economic mess due to currency devaluation and trade sanctions was misdirected and squarely placed on Mugabe. Millions of Zimbabwe citizens were displaced as they fled the country. They are the country’s lost generation. They could not afford even a loaf of bread to feed their children due to runaway inflation.

Then they let the dogs out.

The ferocious western media did not need second bidding. They did what they do best by leading a malicious, scorch-the-earth campaign that categorically denounced the late President. They even went under-belly low and launched a scathing attack on his wife and children. This brilliant President was stripped off of two honorary degrees from western universities. He still had seven left. The thorough destruction of this man was so effectively complete that Mugabe was reduced to a pariah and the world’s biggest laughing stock. Even his fellow Africans joined the rofling fray, not knowing that the joke was on them as they were really laughing themselves into an economic stupor for generations to come. Totally stripped of his iconic character, this regal and proud African Statesman went to his grave a sad and broken man. The beautiful African country of Zimbabwe – that is partially home to the majestic Mosi-Oa-Tunya –  is yet to recover. It was once one of the strongest economies in Africa. The message to other African countries is simple. Tow-the-line or else.

Clearly then, these establishments are hideous tools that have been weaponized to strip Africa off of its wealth. It is blatant injustice that has been enshrined into international law. It really is organised crime, so to speak. They collude with kleptomaniac regimes and reduce whole populations into piteous beggars, wipe out economies at the slightest provocation, spark massive generational displacements of people, mete out hugely inflated borrowing rates, manipulate currencies at whim, instigate unfavorable narratives (brainwashing) and disperse these negative stories through a feral and destructive media, sponsor questionable research with choreographed findings…ad infinitum.

The most recent distortionist tactic has been understating the value of Africa’s natural resources based on geological ‘research’ sponsored by the USA and UK. Doesn’t the piper play the tune? Africa must strongly repudiate such findings in their entirety and focus on protecting its enormous wealth. It is ineffectually an attempt to cover up the staggering rip-off and to quell the rising clamour and noise on, ‘Why are you plundering Africa’s wealth?’ At the height of the civil rights movement, when the USA was in the throes of racial injustice, Martin Luther King decried, ‘An unjust law is no law at all.’  This same thinking must be extrapolated to Africa which is in a murderous chokehold of social and economic injustice.

A Trillion Dollar Account

Africa sits on extremely large reserves of natural resources. The sheer amount of known wealth bequeathed to Africans by nature is astounding. And more and more resources are discovered everyday. Africa should not only be an economic powerhouse, but the quality of life should be exceptional. Yet, Africans who are literally sitting on gold, diamond and oil deposits are living the most miserable of lives. Vast populations are held hostage by social and economic conditions that they cannot afford to provide for even the most basic of physiological needs. Truly, the alleged existence of poverty in Africa defies even the simplest of logic. It is like owning a one trillion dollar bank account, with no access to it. And as the rightful owner, being condemned to a life of deep squalor despite possessing a vast reservoir of means. Per Adesina, President of Africa Development Bank, ‘Saudi Arabia has oil, as does Nigeria. Kuwait has oil, as does Nigeria. Qatar has abundant gas, as does Nigeria and other countries. Yet, Nigeria is the country with the largest share of its population living below the extreme poverty line in 2023 in Africa.’ Stories and images of biting poverty are well documented and are continuously beamed across the world. They make for excellent media fodder. This is now taken for granted as the face of Africa. Yet poverty is really an optical illusion that hoodwinks every person at first glance. One needs only to pierce through this illusion, and the untold abundance and opportunities within the continent are laid bare for even the weakest of sight.