By CHARLES OMONDI
Bob Collymore, the chief executive officer at Kenya's
telecommunication giant Safaricom and former African Development Bank
(AfDB) President Donald Kaberuka were at the 2017 Mo Ibrahim Foundation
annual Governance Weekend conference on April 7.
Their business was to convince a huge audience that Africa’s development was real and not an illusion as held in some quarters.
On the opposite side were Vera Songwe, the head of International
Finance Corporation (IFC) in West and Central Africa, and Mohammed Ould
Bouamatou, the founder of Foundation Pour l’Egalite de Chances en
Afrique. The 63-year-old self-made Mauritanian is also a leading
businessman.
Mr Patrick Smith, the Editor, Africa Report, was the umpire.
By a show of hands, the audience voted for or against the notion
that Africa’s development was an illusion. The vote would be conducted
again at the end of the debate to determine those swayed by the
respective arguments to change their positions.
Erroneous focus
The Afro-Optimists, the believers that Africa’s development was
real, easily won the first vote. The victory was probably because the
voters were genuine or were merely being ‘patriotic’ by not being seen
to have lost faith in sweet mother Africa.
To Dr Kaberuka, things were looking up for Africa, but a lot of
people tended to focus more and erroneously on the continent’s two
giants, Nigeria and South Africa, whose economies were currently headed
south. Outside of the two and in a few conflict zones, the rest of
Africa was doing great, Dr Kaberuka asserted.
In particular, Dr Kaberuka pointed out, there was phenomenal
growth in the service industry, even if manufacturing and agriculture
were not as vibrant.
Fewer businesses, Dr Kabeuka went on, had closed shop in Africa
in the recent past, compared to Russia and Mongolia. Even Africa’s
bludgeoning population was a positive as there could be no development
without the requisite human resource.
Limping economy
To Ms Songwe, even agriculture, the mainstay of the African
economy, was limping. Though the sector employed 70 per cent of the
population, they only worked for three months a year, as their
activities were dependent on human labour and the forces of nature.
How could Africa’s development be real when it was home to half
of the total 746 million people who lived in extreme poverty globally?
She posed.
That some 600 million Africans lived in darkness, having no
access to electricity, which is the main driver of modern economies, was
a further confirmation that Africa’s development was an illusion, Ms
Songwe went on.
The glitzy airports and shopping malls that Africa’s elite were
directing immense resources to, made no meaning to the majority, she
reckoned.
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