Anyone giving a realistic prognosis of Africa’s future right now is not likely to be very optimistic.
The continent, quite ironically, is teeming with opportunity and low-hanging fruits. However, every opportunity and low-hanging fruit has to be harvested and properly invested for it to benefit the people. For now, these very opportunities also happen to be Africa’s biggest Achilles heel.
Africa has been described as the youngest continent owing to its big youthful population. It is estimated that 60% of its population is under 25. These young people are energetic and ambitious; many have talents and skills only waiting to be tapped. But with runaway unemployment rates that show no sign of getting better, we are going to end up with millions of restless and jobless young people who will be ready fodder for rabble-rousing politicians and ready recruits by shadowy organisations including proscribed ones.
The signs are all over. The people who catapulted Zambia’s newly installed leader, Hakainde Hichilema, to office in a continent where beating an establishment candidate is usually unheard of, were mostly young people who saw in him a possible solution to their hopelessness. They came out in such a strong force, and with the backing of ten other opposition parties, it was impossible to ignore them. Unfortunately, the problems that bedevil Zambia, like other African countries, are far more complex and systemic.
In Kenya, East Africa’s biggest economy, the traction that Deputy President William Ruto’s ‘hustler narrative’ has caught has confounded friend and foe alike. The support, which mostly revolves around the youth, seems to cut across the board in the country where political support is usually hinged on ethnic affiliation rather than political ideology. The hustler narrative discredits Kenya’s perceived political architecture, which it says has been dominated by a few powerful families to the exclusion of the majority proletariat.
It will be interesting to watch how these youth movements unfold around the continent and how governments will manage them. What must worry any government coming to office now is that things will likely get worse before they get better. Here’s why.
Whereas the continent is resource-rich, it suffers a poverty of innovation. It lacks the technology to profitably extract and create value out of its resources. As a result, a country such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) with its vast mineral wealth is known more for its unending conflict than its rich deposits of diamonds and cobalt. Its mineral wealth has tended to enrich the wealthy elite as the indigenous people wallow in degrading poverty.
The other challenge which complicates Africa’s recovery is the debt crisis. From west to east to south, African countries went for big loans, mostly from China. They used the money to build big infrastructure projects such as railways, seaports, airports, and highways and also to modernise cities.
All was well until it was time to pay back and the countries’ treasuries realised that the mammoth projects had not been impacting the economy. While tax revenues remained more or less static, there was a loan and interest to pay. Some countries have found themselves in dicey situations where 60% or more of the domestic revenue goes to debt servicing only to run back to the lender for more loans to plug the budget deficit. It is a cul-de-sac of sorts and will require painful choices to manoeuvre out. To put it crudely, they have the citizens by the balls.
The debt crisis has hit the economies in the region hard in more ways than anyone can imagine. It has taken away money that could be invested in agribusiness, a sector which has the potential to create thousands of additional new jobs every year. Financial institutions, particularly banks, no longer see the need to lend to small businesses. They have a very reliable borrower in government. As a result, credit that could be extended to small and medium-sized businesses has virtually diminished.
It used to be that people would leave the countryside to find white and blue-collar jobs. What we are going to witness in the coming years is a migration of survival. The last two years of COVID-19 gave us a taste of what happens when opportunities in urban areas dry up. Faced with homelessness in the cities, hordes of people will pack up and return to the villages. In the villages, they will meet an agricultural sector that is under-resourced and reeling under the effects of climate change. They will painfully discover that what they produce from their land cannot compete with imports from other countries and that brokers make more money than the producers. Some will attempt to return to the hostile cities but quite a number will cross over to neighbouring countries in a flight for survival.
Welcome to the future. Welcome to debt refugees.
