Coronavirus’ clarion call for Africa’s self-reliance

It is very possible that every nation in the world can get into complete self-preservation mode and cease to consider helping others.

The coronavirus experience has given us a chance to peep at that scenario from a distance. In any case even countries with usual capacity to extend assistance to others can be instantly disabled and rendered incapable. We have had a glimpse of this as well during this season.

A 2016 report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development indicated that Africa received USD27.7 billion in donations.

The top ten beneficiaries of this actually took 44 percent of the funds, indicating a high concentration of donor dependency in those economies. Only about a third of African countries have GDPs that are actually more than the USD27.7 parcel above. The need for external support is therefore immense.

However, African nations cannot keep looking to other countries to fill the gap in material needs forever. According to the above report, 81 percent of donations to Africa came from the top ten contributors, with USA and European Union institutions accounting for 33 percent of the entire package.

This means that Africa’s foreign support structure is also heavily concentrated and that if anything disabled the leading contributors from giving, Africa would be in dire financial crisis. African Development Bank accounted for 4 percent of donations to African countries, but then again the bank itself also heavily relies on foreign donations.

Since we have noticed from the coronavirus crisis that the possibility of having leading donor nations crippled is not entirely remote, the need for self-reliance has become more apparent than ever before. It has always been, but we are now loudly reminded.

Some Pan-African voices have previously highlighted some of the leading challenges that hamper the continent’s breakthrough towards self-reliance.

Quoting directly from some of them, the impediments include ideological disorientation with its resultant sectarianism and conflicts, stifling of the private entrepreneurial class, deficiencies in physical infrastructure, fragmented markets and poor market access together with constrained market expansion and poor industrialization and low value addition.

Added to these are human resource deficiencies, underdeveloped agriculture and different weaknesses in public institutions that together curtail advancement or even threaten the wellbeing and continuity of already registered gains.

Without addressing the above, emancipation from reliance on external support is nearly a lost cause.

Yet though, some of the above critical issues do not even require huge financial investment but mainly a mindset change by ourselves. Those that require a mindset change are possibly even more critical as the base for all the others to sprout from.

They include changing our work ethic and the direct impact on strengthening some of public institutions. As well included in here is making investment in the agricultural sector, which in some countries already does well while running mainly as a rain-fed enterprise and yet feeding millions, with close to no modern farming interventions at all.

And then related to all the above is the fact that the world continues to exhibit strange protectionist tendencies and mistreatment of the poor. Africa’s bottom position at the global wealth stratum is not one to stay. The future implications may be more brutal than the continent has seen before.

For example, recently it was rather strange that Chinese could turn on another race with blame for risks of infection by the coronavirus, least of all Africans who have possibly already been resident in China for a while or if they had arrived there recently were doing so from a jurisdiction so far least affected by the virus.

One would wonder if citizens of countries battling the virus at higher levels of strain are resident in China at all, since there was no news that they suffered the same problem of mistreatment and humiliation meted on Africans.

The whole scenario left a huge impression of straightforward disdain of Africans by their Chinese hosts, certainly clothed in the wealth-wise disadvantage of the Africans.
Racial discrimination, as was exhibited, is a wealth profiling game and often picks on the poor for victims. Africa, endowed as she is with high potential in natural resources and one of the most favorable environments, must fast-track progress towards self-reliance and exit the current levels of poverty, for her dignity.

There is already a lot of work in progress by African leaders. It needs quickening. Most of this work is within the agenda of Africa’s trade unity and other integration initiatives in pipeline.

The coronavirus crisis has resounded the fact that Africa is facing in the right direction with the above initiatives. It has reconfirmed that there is no time to wait but move forward fast.

Raymond is a Chartered Risk Analyst and risk management consultant
[email protected]