Africa is said to be rising, turning a definitive page in its history. African per capita growth figures are relatively high and have now been sustained for a decade or so, constructed on the back of high commodity prices. Analyses thus far have had strong evangelical undertones, suggesting that Africa has turned a corner and that its emergence is imminent.
Barely a week passes without a new article, official report, or conference eulogizing the continent and its growth figures. Africa has been called a "rising star" and a global power that "will rule the 21st century."
1. Previous, less positive studies on Africa's political economy are dismissed as "Afro-pessimism," to be swept away by " the Ultimate Frontier Market."
2. It is clear that a flip-flop in attitudes regarding the continent has occurred. With minimal critical consideration, the narrative has swung from a portrayal of Africa as a basket case to Africa now being the future. Growth in GDP and opportunities for investors are the new intonations in a crude construction of Africa that has shifted almost overnight. In the context of stagnating or slowly growing Western economies, Africa's growth does look comparatively healthy-setting aside for a moment the flatteningout of over fifty variable countries into one entity known as Africa. However, the current process " deepens and intensifies Africa's inveterate and deleterious terms of (mal)integration within the global political economy-terms which continue to be characterized by external dominance and socially damaging and extraverted forms of accumulation."
3. While the situation depends on national context, most African countries remain typified by an over-dependence on the export of raw materials while importing finished products due to the legacies of colonialism.
4. There is little added value for African producers. This reality is glossed over by the " Africa rising" mantra, which focuses on growth. Here it is helpful to note Timothy Shaw's separation of structural and suPerficial features of Africa's economies. The superficial features can be identified in the GDP figures, industry, prices, debt levels, and exchange value. The structural features are less obvious but more critical, chief among them being Africa's place in the international division of labor.
5. There is no evidence thus far that Africa's structural profile is improving, which should alert us to the dangers of being dazzled by numbers. African economies remain integrated in the global economy in ways that are generally unfavorable to the continent and ensure structural dependence.
Africa Rising
It is popularly said that Africa's time has come and that the continent is embarking on a radically different and better stage in its history. GDP growth has been the central focus of such commentaries, and talk of " the hopeless continent," as The Economist called Africa in 2000, has been dropped in favor of names such as " a hopeful continent."
6. The mood swing over Africa is linked to increasing global demand for the continent's resources, primarily driven by the rise of China as a major global economic actor.
7. The Africa rising mantra, which prefers to present endogenous factors as causal factors, fails to account for the role of China and other emerging economies. Yet as Patrick Bond notes:
Ongoing resource extraction by Western firms was joined, and in some cases overtaken, by China [and others]....Still, Africa's subordinate position did not change, and aside from greater amounts of overseas development aid flowing into fewer than 15 "fragile states", the North-South flows were not to Africans' advantage. One would not know this from reading reports by the elite multilateral institutions in 2011, which celebrated the continent's national economies as among the world's leading cases of post-meltdown economic recovery.
8. The popular flip-flop regarding the continent marks a change from the familiar media images of flyblown children that had previously dominated the discussion of Africa. …
Source: questia
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