03:36 GMT 14th June 2011
The growth has been fuelled mostly by natural resources, new discoveries of which have seen former economic backwaters like Equatorial Guinea jump into the growth league. Chana is also about to enjoy a boom with the commencement commercial production of oil last December. In Nigeria, the growing price of crude oil has kept the economy af10at despite collapsing infrastructure and untamed corruption among the ruling elite.
If the World Bank's figures are to be believed, a third of the continent's one billion people have moved to the middle class band. The continent's growth has also grown from investments by the so called BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries. China has mostly led the charge, investing in the continent on generous terms with its focus on access to mineral resources, long the preserve of Western countries. It has also separated politics from investment, showing a willingness to invest in countries like Zimbabwe, which have fallen out of favour with the West. Besides, the mineral for infrastructure investment approach has empowered many African countries to rebuild their decaying infrastructure, thereby laying the foundation for sustainable economic growth.
The statistics fail to tell the entire story. The continent is still plagued by poverty, corruption, instability and weak infrastructure. UntiI these weaknesses are taken care of, Africa's hope of economic Eldorado will remain a pipe dream. The problem is that the continent's approach to rapid economic development has always been bereft of indigenous initiative. We have always expected the salvation to come from outside our shores. When we are not swallowing abstract economic development prescriptions from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, we are looking to foreign aid to solve even the most basic of problems. The truth is that neither these prescriptions nor aid will ever solve Africa's problems.
The continent has now moved from aid to the mantra of trade as an economic tool. Without doubt, trade is a key stimulus to development but the trouble is that when all we have to export are natural resources, we will still remain hewers of wood for the simple reason that we are not adding value nor creating new goods and services. We are not developing any industrial or technological base. Our central banks are full of dollars paid as royalties by those who exploit the natural resources, take it to their countries, add value and export it to us to reclaim the royalties they paid in the first place. In Nigeria which can do better, crude oil is exported only for the country to import petrol. It cannot fix its refineries and does not even realise it should build new ones to meet rising domestic consumption. Again in Africa we are failing to adopt trade as one of the enablers of a well thought out economic development approach. The Chinese and the Indians did not get to where they are by exporting natural resources. They invested in technical education and economic infrastructure. Over time, the investment paid off as their people were able to take advantage not just of the resources within the domestic environment but also of the opportunities offered by the global economy.
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