Africa has the potential to be a global superpower. A continent filled with endless natural resources, with a youthful population that could be empowered to change the fortunes of what is considered the oldest continent on the planet. However, corruption, poor leadership, and a lack of foresight have kept this promising continent mired in poverty.
Throughout the periods, many people have proposed several remedies to the issue of poverty on the continent. Primitive problems, I suppose, because we are in an era where most of the mistakes have already been committed, putting us on a highway to development. Newly developed nations have been able to reach their new status in record time due to this fact.
Firstly, it is a fallacy that a free-market economy is a panacea for eradicating poverty in Africa because most parts of the continent have that, yet we are still poor. The sole intent and core value of that system is profit, and profit is not a means to eradicate poverty. Don’t mistake this for some communist naivety.
Some “intellectuals” claim this continent seems to be locked in perpetual poverty because of the lack of a favorable business environment, which is a half-truth. The issue is the kind of businesses the system favors. It’s no secret that people make fortunes out of this continent. A system that has turned small foreign startups into big companies. That is a free market at work.
Africa has tremendous business potential. I’ve so many friends going to your countries, trying to get rich.
It wasn’t for fun when the former U.S. President said the continent had become a place American firms ought to be, and it’s true because we have the resources, the workforce, and a system that ensures a return on your investments.
Often, people try to negate the impact of slavery, colonization, and imperialism on the socioeconomic development of this continent. For reasons best known to themselves, they act oblivious to the fact that remnants of these endeavors continue to impact our way of life, affecting everything from education and language to religion, economics, and governance.
Africa must indeed move on, and we can’t continue to make excuses for our misfortunes. But we can’t progress without addressing the past to learn from our shortcomings. Eradicating poverty in Africa is a more complex issue than just implementing a skewed system of a free market economy.
People often cite the emergence of new “first worlds” such as Singapore, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and China as potent examples of free market miracles. This isn’t entirely true. These nations wouldn’t have been prosperous if they had left their fate to the whims of a market economy. It took leadership and intent to be successful.
The late former PM of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, noted in a speech at the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School that “the hardware part (economic transformation, infrastructure) was easy, getting people to change their habits to march first world infrastructure that they now have, that was more difficult, slow and painful.” Poverty is a mental state.
Lee also mentioned the forebears of independence, such as Ghana in Africa, nations he said failed to change their fortunes post-independence due to their operational ideologies.
I don’t think Lee was unconscious of the fact that while he had 31 years to reorient his nation and place it on the path of prosperity, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana had only six years before he was ousted in his absence with the help of the so-called “b#st#rd son” of the colonizers. And I must say that the institutions and infrastructure established by the socialist Nkrumah remain cornerstones of the new free-market Ghana.
A free-market system is a tool. An instrument to spur trade. A single spoke in the wheel of growth. The system is not a solution to eradicating poverty and ensuring equity. The evidence is from America and the United Kingdom.
Africa’s problems are usually over-simplified, I believe, with intent. People are quick to criticize state ownership and the one-party policies implemented by the early leaders, who sought to foster cohesion and accelerate development. They often advocate for privatization and limited government influence as a path to prosperity. But usually, when shit hits the fan in the economic Meccas, it is the government that pulls up with a bagload of tax money to clean up.
We have tried privatization. According to Appiah-Kubi (2001), Ghana privatized 212 (41%) state-owned organizations by 2001, after being ‘forced’ to do so by the Bretton Woods institutions. And according to the Bank of Ghana, another 123 SoEs were privatized between 2001 and 2005. Posterity, they say, is the judge.
When we decided to sell Ghana Telecom to Vodafone in 2008, they argued that it would help make Ghana a force to reckon with in the telecom space. Fourteen years on, you be the judge. They say the government didn’t contribute its quota. But well…💁
The doctrine of ‘Africa’s free market economies’ emphasizes economic liberalism underpinned by progress in privatization, state enterprise restructuring, and downscaling of public expenditure along the transition to a market economy. The “African Capitalist State” represents integration of rural agricultural sectors into the mainstream of the cash market economy. The traditional negative discrimination against poor farmers and miners is disappearing while industrial liberalization is developing a new competitive culture in business. Liberal trade policies also continually integrate Africa to the world economy while community projects are being decided, designed and implemented by the poor themselves.
I am not oblivious to the relevance of the private sector. Governance is not commerce. Government is an enabler, a check, and a guidance instrument. States need the private sector to mobilize capital and undertake developmental projects without unnecessarily burdening their citizenry. But it is folly to assume that the progress of a nation can be left to the forces of free market economics.
Today, some British people are protesting to have the power company returned to the state so that they won’t freeze to death.
When former President Obama visited Ghana, he said, “Africa doesn’t need strongmen. It needs strong institutions.” I say Africa needs strong men to build strong institutions. I have heard intelligent people say that poor leadership is the bane of Africa, and that is true. Africa needs strong leaders who will not gloss over the remnants of slavery, colonization, and imperialism. Thoughtful leaders who will reorient their citizenry to carry them along the dreadful and could be bloody course to prosperity. Not speech readers.
We need patriots, not self-serving individuals corrupted by greed, well-oriented people with foresight who understand the task at hand.
We must accept the fact that nobody is going to help us get out of this predicament. We are too profitable in our current state for them to want to change it. There’s no charity in development. Developed nations seize their destiny and work to change it for the better.
A common characteristic among the new first-worlds is leadership. African leaders must learn to address their challenges at home, rather than traveling the world to deliver speeches and solicit aid.
For progress, we must revise our strategy. I am not stupid enough to think we can do it alone. Of course, we will need corporations and other developed nations for capital and ideas, but we must change our approach to these engagements. We must re-evaluate our positions in these negotiations and work on them to bring real value to our people.
People on this continent have faced numerous challenges for centuries, with traumas that have been passed down from one generation to the next. We must make a holistic effort at human development – this could be a panacea for our predicaments.
The brilliant leader who transformed Singapore said, and I repeat, “the hardware part (economic transformation, infrastructure) was easy, getting people to change their habits to march first world infrastructure that they now have, that was more difficult, slow, and painful.” People make development, not a market system.
The issue of Africa’s development is a broad conversation that can’t be addressed in a single article, and I would appreciate hearing your thoughts on this issue in the comments.
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