Africa’s chance for socioeconomic turnaround is time-bound

With fifty four countries and two territories whose sovereign independence is in dispute, Africa covers an area of 30.37 million square kilometers. This constitutes twenty percent of global land area and six percent of the entire earth’s surface. It is the second largest continent after Asia and currently is home to about seventeen percent of global population and has the highest rate of population growth in the world.

The continent remains poorest, with almost fifty per cent of the population living on less than $1.25 (about Shs4,600) per day. The continent remains largely tuned to foreign expirations for her development needs, with production directed to feed foreign markets with raw materials while means of production are sought in form of support from foreign nations. The continent’s potential for self reliance is compromised by years of dependence and the continent has not been able to transform her vast resources to advantage. Africa has largely stayed stuck to a colonial model of natural resource extraction and export of this resource as raw material, and subsequently importing the final products of the resource at extremely high prices. Africa’s natural resource output continues to fuel growth and development in industrialized economies while Africa herself remains poor and looking to these economies for aid. To make it worse, the environmental cost of natural resource extraction is of a nature that poor nations cannot contend with, on their own. As such, the impacts of climate change are predicted to hit Africa hardest in years to come because the cost of adapting to the assault of climate change is too high for poor nations to afford. It is estimated that by 2040, Africa will lose two to four percent of GDP to climate change. Experts have also warned that by 2050, Africa could be fulfilling only thirteen percent of her food needs, if current trends persist. About 65 percent of African workers whose livelihood depends on agriculture would be threatened if this played out.

With regard to commercial agriculture, what the continent produces in vast quantities mainly benefits other players since the continent tends to export farm produce in its raw form. For example, it has been reported that while Africa produces 75 percent of the world’s cocoa, she gets only two percent of the $100billion global cocoa industry. There is no foreseeable strategic turnaround, in such an unfortunate state of affairs, short of drastic measures that the continent needs to adopt in order to avert such gross exploitation. Africa will have to find solutions within her borders to beneficially utilize her resources for impactful. This is likely to come with short-term consequences as the rest of the world may react adversely when Africa moves to close exploitative outflow of her produce.

In recent years, the world has exhibited growing protectionism and decline in trade and diplomatic ethics, to the extent that the global trade system is no longer as reliable as it used to be. With this, Africa is at very high risk as she continues to operate an externally motivated economic model – where the continent lacks the means to put to use her raw materials and other primary outputs and must therefore export them raw and thereafter depend on developed nations to supply back valuable final products of her initial exports.

Africa has unique inherent opportunities but which can actually turn out to be disadvantages if the continent does not turn around to address current bottlenecks. The exploding population could imply vast and diversified human resource capacity but currently this population is shooting high, along with unemployment rates. Education systems are falling short of addressing skills gaps and leaving a big number of the young population stranded without work, yet with the highest level of formal education available, in some instances. The continent is afflicted with hunger and according to World Vision reports, economic woes, drought, and extreme weather are reversing years of progress so that 237 million sub-Saharan Africans are chronically undernourished, more than in any other region. In the whole of Africa, 257 million people are experiencing hunger, which is 20 percent of the population.

Africa can still address the challenge she faces but if current trends are not addressed, it is possible that these challenges will overtake the continent and yield irreversible consequences that future generations may fail to address. There is a window in which these challenges should be closed, for sustainability and viability of the continent. This window will certainly expire with time. African leaders are aware of this and have started out with initiatives to strengthen continental trade harmony and economic oneness, as a key driver of needed transformation. The momentum for this should be maintained, and intensified.

Raymond is a Chartered Risk Analyst and risk management consultant
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