Corona Virus & the Beginning of the African Century
Africa’s progress will be shaped by two powerful forces: a fast growing middle class with rising spending power; and the growing integration of Africa’s markets. All of the 10 fastest growing cities globally are in Africa. And, the rapid urbanization, increasing migration and remittances, rising share of children in school, hundreds of thousands of students at universities abroad and the hundred thousands at universities domestically are reasons for hope. Currently, the biggest problem is the continent’s ability to develop value chains. Africa exports oil but imports gasoline, it exports cocoa beans and imports chocolate, and it exports Tin, Tantalum, Titanium, and Gold (3TG) and import cell phones. Only 17% of African countries’ trade is with each other, compared with intra-regional trade of 60 – 70% in Asia and Europe. Moreover, the Sahel is stuck in cycles of violence, high fertility, and illiteracy that must be considered in order to bring about development that is resilient.
Africa has become veterans at dealing with outbreaks even though sub-Saharan Africa has about one doctor for every 5,000 people compared to one for every 300 persons in Europe. One in three deaths in Africa every year is from an infectious or parasitic disease, compared with one in 50 in Europe. The recent Ebola outbreaks across West Africa in 2014 – 2016 and in Eastern Congo in 2018 – 2020 have taught policy makers vital lessons. Advanced warning allowed Africa to boost testing capacity with Senegal and Uganda testing residents as early as February. And, as of April at least 40 countries had capacity to test. However, Covid-19 is a huge risk to the continent’s people and will disrupt its economies. More than half of city-dwellers are in crowded slums. And, given the overall lack of capacity, Covid-19 could have horrific consequences.
Entire industries like tourism has collapsed, flower exports have stopped, manufacturing is stricken, trade is at a trickle, and ships are turning up partly empty or not at all. Social safety nets where they exist tend to support old people and mothers, not the jobless. Thus, if people do not work they do not eat. And, the burden on the healthcare system from Covid-19 could impede treatments of other diseases. Studies from the West-African Ebola outbreak show many people died because they could not get treatment for malaria, HIV, tuberculosis as from Ebola itself. Fake news is also a leading problem with the spread of news in Africa. WhatsApp Groups, which more Africans are typically members of than anywhere else on the continent, are being used to spread dodgy cures and conspiracy theories. Lastly, there is a mentality of if we die, we die, but we’re going to have a good time. This shows that the economic effects of Covid-19 in African countries will be both colossal and different from the rich world with the overall effect being more serious than 2008.
A fiscal response on the African continent on the scale seen in the rich world would require outside help. If the rich, western world is slow to respond, China will probably dominate the response. Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba and China’s richest man, has donated 20,000 testing kits, 100,000 masks and 1,000 protective suit's to each African country. This gift may soon be followed by economic assistance, which could cement China’s position as the main development and financial partner for many African countries. If outside funding is the key to Africa fighting Covid-19, then Africa must (1) accurately track incoming aid dollars; (2) track the transparency in spent aid dollars for human growth and development (Follow the Money is a Nigerian based NGO taking on the tasks of tracking funding and spending); and (3) make long-term, growth forward solutions toward national and continental progress (She Grows It™ is a transdisciplinary consulting firm based in Accra and Dakar taking on the task of developing resilient growth forward solutions for African nation states).
By Dr. Ashley D. Milton, Managing Director