Shifting perceptions: Has Africa entered a new phase in its relations with the world?

Edson Owusu

Sifting through figures, facts, and discourses, our Chief Editor examines the reasons behind changing perceptions of Africa in the last decade.

In 2011, the World Bank published a 36-page report, titled ‘Africa’s Future and the World Bank’s Support to It’. Within it, they declared that, as a result of a multitude of factors, sub-Saharan Africa possessed an “unprecedented opportunity for transformation and sustained growth”, and concluded that, when these factors were put together, “Africa could be on the brink of an economic take-off, much like China was 30 years ago, and India 20 years ago.”

These observations and predictions were significant for a number of reasons, but arguably the greatest significance lies in their source. The World Bank, along with the International Monetary Fund, had been a fundamental progenitor of the neoliberal reforms and structural adjustment programmes that characterised the development efforts of African states in the 1980s and 1990s in the wake of the oil and debt crises of the 1970s. Virtually every analysis on the impact of these reforms considered them to have failed; average annual African GDP growth fell by 2% in the 1980s and 1990s, food self-sufficiency was damaged, and there was a rise in poverty and inequality which had a particularly devastating impact on the urban poor.

In addition, the role of the state was shrunk significantly, leading to reduced social welfare provision and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGO’s) attempting to fill the void, while economically, many African countries became deindustrialised, as ‘industrial policy’ became a taboo term that was associated by International Financial Institutions with ‘import substitution strategies that involved state protection of infant industries.’ The negative impacts of these policies contributed to the perception of Africa as a global bread-basket, as a ‘scar on the conscience of the world’, as a continent that had failed and that was in need of salvation. This perception dominated discourse concerning the African continent into the 21st century; the 2005 Commission for Africa declared that the situation on the continent was the “greatest tragedy of our time”.

In the last ten to fifteen years, there has been an extraordinary shift in Africa’s relations with the rest of the world in comparison to the first few years of this century and the final decades of the antecedent century. In the aforementioned World Bank report, China and India were cited as the examples of ‘economic take-off’ that the African continent could aspire to follow. The emergence of these, and other nations such as Brazil and Russia as significant economic forces with large consumer markets and lofty geopolitical ambitions has been pivotal in reshaping the economic, social, and geopolitical realities of African states. At the beginning of this century, two-way trade between China and Africa amounted to $1 billion. By 2011, this had grown exponentially, to over $150 billion. In four short years, between 2006-07 and 2010-11, India’s trade with Africa more than doubled, from $24.98 billion to $52.81 billion. Meanwhile, Africa’s merchandise trade rose from $217 billion in 1995 to $1.2 trillion in 2013.

In prior decades, Africa’s economic output had been typically dependent on primary commodities, such as oil and precious metals. This is part of the reason why the direct effects of the oil crises of the 1970s reverberated so strongly on the continent. While commodities remain vital to many powerful African economies, particularly West African nations such as Ghana and Nigeria, in 2018, the fastest growing regional economy on the continent was in East Africa, which possesses few marketable natural resources, yet grew by approximately 5.7%, in comparison to resource rich West Africa’s 3.3% GDP growth. The diversification of Africa’s economy is illustrated by a 2011 Economist report, which observed that ‘when the world economy – and with it commodity prices – tanked in 2008, African growth rates barely budged.’

Furthermore, a combination of socioeconomic, political, and demographic developments has resulted in Africa representing a much more attractive market for imports and investment, further reorienting Africa’s relations with the rest of the world. In terms of social structures, as the aforementioned Economist report stated, by 2011, a genuine middle class was emerging in Africa; over 60m households had annual incomes greater than $3,000. The ability of African citizens to communicate and broaden their horizons has been enhanced by growing mobile phone ownership, and smartphone usage rising substantially.

For instance, in 2013, 33% and 13% of South African and Ghanaian adults respectively owned a smartphone; by 2017, this had risen to 51% and 35%. With markets having been saturated elsewhere, African citizens are perceived by MNC’s as a potentially lucrative consumer market, which has prompted substantial investment and led to, among other things, Western-style shopping malls popping up around the continent.

Greater political stability and democratisation has also helped to reshape Africa’s geopolitical position. The number of ongoing conflicts has decreased, many more countries hold elections which result in peaceful transitions of power, and there is a greater level of trust in institutions such as the courts and police than existed within the continent prior to the twenty-first century. Although there is still a substantial amount of corruption and misrule, and conflict rages on in many states such as South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the overall situation has doubtless improved, and investment has followed on from that.

Additionally, the increased geopolitical clout of African states can be observed in international institutions, where powerful nations and blocs make determined and meaningful overtures for African support. One example of this has been collaborative efforts by India and African states to try and restructure the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). In 2006, the fifteen members of the Economic Community of West African States supported India’s application to be a permanent UNSC member. This attempt failed, yet two years later, India’s External Affairs Minister still held the view that ‘the support of Africa for reform and expansion of the UN Security Council, in both permanent and non-permanent categories, is critical’.

African leaders and ministers are treated as equal partners on the international stage through initiatives such as the Forum for China Africa Cooperation, which is convened every three years at ministerial level, and has helped to increase the growth of Chinese investment in Africa. India has also promoted a number of regional trade agreements in Africa, and sees multilateralism as a cornerstone of its foreign policy. This marks a significant discontinuity from previous phases of African engagement with other world powers which were conducted on a bilateral. level, often to the detriment of smaller African nations who were subjected to unfavourable terms in trade agreements and loans.

Therefore, a number of impacts generated by the rise of ‘emerging powers’ in ‘emerging markets’ can certainly be perceived as marking a new phase in Africa’s relations with the world. In geopolitical terms, multilateral African groupings are treated as equal partners by other rising powers such as Brazil and India, in contrast to the Cold War era when newly decolonised states were viewed as pawns in the ideological battle between communism and capitalism.

African economic growth has been impressive and has opened up new opportunities for investment and development, while global trends such as increased interconnectedness and technological development have also helped to boost Africa’s position, as its population has become, on average, more educated, slightly wealthier, and better governed. The general discourse in the West regarding Africa has changed dramatically as a result and reflection of these developments.

However, this new discourse has also played a part in masking the significant continuities that exist between various phases of Africa’s relations with the world. Firstly, there is the question of the extent to which Africa, as a whole, has seen its relations with the rest of the world change as a result of ‘emerging powers’ and ‘emerging markets’. In 2010, foreign direct investment in sub-Saharan Africa was over $55 billion. However, 75% of this investment went to ten African states, with many receiving little investment at all.

Secondly, although multilateral engagements between African states and major powers have increased, the majority of engagement with external powers is done on a bilateral basis, and thus trade terms are often skewed towards non-African countries. Furthermore, African countries are among those that continue to be disadvantaged by the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, which ‘seriously distorted commodity markets, depressing prices for African maize, sugar and beef and eliminating the competitive advantage many African countries should have had in a free marketplace.’ This contributes to Africa remaining a net food importer, a situation that has persisted since 1973.

Furthermore, in terms of the engagement of resource-rich African states with other powers, while the methods and actors may have changed, the ultimate objectives of external powers remain the same as it did in the colonial era; maximum extraction at minimum cost. In many African countries, substantial backlash has occurred in response to the activities of Chinese firms and government agencies. In Zambia, a country that gets half of its GDP from copper, the opposition party in three elections (2006, 2008, 2011) based on anti-Chinese platform.

Resource grabs continue to trigger or contribute to instability; in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the extraction of coltan has been linked to poverty, warfare and environmental despoliation. Extraction is also often carried out through bribes and other underhand methods. Timber, a key material in the furniture industry, is increasingly demand in China, where 70% and 90% respectively of Gabon and Equatorial Guinea’s timber is illegally exported to.

In many instances across the continent, large populations are displaced and dispossessed to make way for the operations of MNC’s. For instance, 15,000 were violently displaced in Uganda to make way for the construction of a timber plantation in 2011. This plantation was meant to contribute to climate change mitigation, and has followed a trend of climate motivated land-grabbing that has been termed by Padraig Carmody as ecological colonisation, or ecolonisation; a process whereby ‘rich countries and consumers draw unsustainably on the biocapacity of other world regions for their own benefit’. African states often collude in this process for financial and political reasons, in a situation that is again reminiscent of colonialism, and the collaboration of indigenous political entities or tribal authorities with colonial powers.

The continuities observed in many aspects of this phase of Africa’s relations with external powers make it possible to suggest that, in some instances, such as the Chinese implementation of an ‘Angola-mode’, in which numerous incentives are packaged together in return for substantial access to resource markets, these interactions can be depicted as cases of ‘different player, same game’, with the game being to profit as much as possible from Africa’s resources.

As we head into the third decade of this century, it is virtually certain that Africa has entered a new phase in its relations with world, and that the rise of emerging powers such as China and India, as well as emerging markets in technology have played a significant role in this. This should not, however, mean that the continuities that exist between this phase and previous phases in Africa’s relations with the world should be ignored or considered to be inconsequential. When it comes to facets that are disadvantageous for Africa, such as illegal extraction and land-grabbing, it is in fact highly important to attempt to understand why these facets persist across different phases in Africa’s relations with the world. Nonetheless, despite these continuities, too much has changed, often for the better, to perceive of this period of Africa’s relations with the world as anything but a new phase, and one which has the potential to be highly advantageous for many African states.