Why entire world yearns for a piece of the African pie

By David Migun

In Summary

• 60 per cent of the world’s arable land is found in Africa.
• n Africa today, wars have reduced from over 20 two decades ago to just about three. This has made it possible for Africa to move out of dormancy to becoming an economically active place.

Why is the entire world very interested in Africa? This is the question most Africa watchers have been asking in view of renewed trade and investment activity in a continent that the world had only a few years ago dismissed as hopeless.

The answer lies in the shocking lessons the world learned about two years ago when The Economist magazine published some fresh statistics on Africa.

Top on list of the shocking statistics was the revelation that 60 per cent of the world’s arable land is found in Africa.

The real size of Africa shows that the United States, Europe and parts of Asia can fit into Africa and leave some space.

The entire United States of America is some three million square miles while Africa is a massive 11 million square miles.

The horizontal lines representing time zones are widest at the equator and narrowest outside the tropics and hence the explanations as to why wider tracts of land in Africa are within a time zone compared with those of smaller areas of land near the poles.

Distortions resulting from flat maps have kept us away from knowing the real size of our continent.

Economies are one of the shyest things known today. The absence of peace drives economies to their death beds. In Africa today, wars have reduced from over 20 two decades ago to just about three.

This has made it possible for Africa to move out of dormancy to becoming an economically active place.

People leave the comfort of their homes far away to get to Africa not so much because they love the inhabitants but because they love what is in the continent. Too many foreign visitors jetting in, has now become so commonplace that it is beginning to look normal.

Just recently, the British made a public apology and followed it with financial compensation for those who bore the brunt of the colonial atrocities meted on the Mau Mau movement at the height of the clamour for Kenya’s independence.

After denials that lasted over 50 years, it has become necessary to compensate victims in their sunset years.

READ: Britain agrees compensation deal for Kenya torture victims

It could be argued that their lawyers put up a good fight but I think that diplomacy is at play.

The British have invested heavily in Kenya and elsewhere in Africa. In our case, Britain has strategic interests that are economic and military.