Every day, Google News sends me a number of articles with
the keywords “literacy” and “Africa.” The majority only mention literacy in passing
and then go on to offer a gloomy outlook on African development. Having worked with a number of Africa
students and visited Africa, I know that it is
not the gloomy and hopeless place that many media outlets make it out to
be. So everyday I ask myself, “Where are
the African news stories with a positive tone?”
The following article is a breath of fresh air. Event though this piece, like most others,
only mentions literacy in passing, it offers some very uplifting statistics on
the state literacy and education in Africa. Recognizing the good along with the bad, this
piece provides a well balanced perspective on African development.
It is undeniable that there are a number of very serious
issues that Africa and its many states must
address to free themselves from the cycle of extreme poverty. I’m not suggesting that these topics should
be ignored by the media or that they do not deserve attention. However, it is important these issues are
approached in a constructive way and that impactful development is given the
recognition it deserves. Positive
reinforcement and positive thinking are key components of progress...
Has Africa finally turned a corner?
By Scott
Baldauf | Staff writer of The Christian
Science Monitor
JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA
– With a decade of sustained economic growth, increasing
demand for African minerals and oil, and a falling number of conflicts, the
trend lines for some countries in sub-Saharan Africa
are finally starting to look pretty good.
A new World Bank report, issued last week, has
gone as far as to say that 2005 may be the year when Africa "turned the
corner" from poverty and debt to prosperity and wealth. In a continent
that was once almost entirely dependent on foreign aid, there are now 16
countries that have achieved annual growth rates in excess of 4.5 percent for
more than a decade.
"Africa today is a continent on the move,
making tangible progress on delivering better health, education, growth, trade,
and poverty-reduction outcomes," said Gobind Nankani, the World Bank vice
president for the Africa region.
The African Development Indicators for 2006 report, of course,
doesn't pretend that all of Africa's problems have been solved - from the
spread of HIV-AIDS to continued conflicts in Sudan
and Somalia
to the persistent lack of basic services, such as water, sanitation, and
education. But for a continent that has gotten used to hearing glass-half-empty
analysis of what has gone wrong, the report has decidedly emphasized what has
gone right.
"While economic outcomes are increasingly diverse, Africa has made near uniform progress in social outcomes,
notably education and health," explained John Page, the World Bank's Chief
Economist for the Africa Region.
It is the very diversity of Africa - with fast-growing oil
states like Equatorial Guinea
and rapidly-declining states like Zimbabwe - that makes any sweeping
statement imprecise at best. Yet here are a few encouraging trend lines that
are starting to have repercussions of the positive sort.
• The number of conflicts in Africa
has dropped to just five in 2005, from a peak of 16 in 2002.
• During the past two decades, fertility rates have dropped in
every African country. The greatest drop in fertility is found in Namibia to
3.8 in 2004 from 5.9 in 1990, followed by Rwanda, to 5.5 (2004) from 7.4
(1990).
• Several African countries, including Senegal, Mozambique,
Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Uganda,
and Ghana
are on course to cut the number of people living in poverty by half by 2010.
Cutting poverty is one of the Millennium Development Goals agreed to by 189
nations in New York
in 2000.
• Enrollment in primary schools has increased continentwide to
93 percent in 2004 from 72 percent in 1990, and literacy rates have
consequently risen to 65 percent in 2002 from 50 percent in 1997.
Low incomes, bad roads and ports
Yet amid these positive trends, there are darker clouds as well.
• Almost half of Africa's
population still lives below the poverty line, which the World Bank defines as
an income of less than $1 a day.
• African economies must grow at about an annual rate of 7
percent - on a par with India
and China
- in order to meet their target of cutting poverty in half by 2015. Governments
must also either invest or encourage investment of at least 5 percent of their
gross domestic product in infrastructure in order for their economies to
continue growing.
• Inadequate roads, inefficient ports, and power outages have
helped make Africa home to six of the 10
countries judged to be the most difficult environments in which to start a
business, according to a recent World Bank study. The lack of foreign
investment - Africa received just 1.6 percent
of all foreign direct investment ($10.1 billion) in 2005 - means fewer jobs to
relieve poverty.
Prosperity brings new challenges
Sarah Crowe, spokeswoman for the United Nations Children's Fund
(UNICEF), says that even economic prosperity can bring its own set of new
challenges.
"We're now moving to a world of peri-urban slums and
megacities bursting at the seams - such as Kinshasa
and Lagos and Nairobi - with people moving to cities to
find work," says Ms. Crowe. Such big cities have been unable to keep pace
with the population growth, and growing demand for clean drinking water and
sanitation facilities. Big cities are also key points for the spread of
HIV-AIDS, a disease with devastating economic potential, since it targets
primarily those who are in their prime working years.
"Unquestionably, there is a momentum there, but the big
challenge for NGOs (non-governmental organizations) will be these gray
areas," adds Crowe.
Some in the aid community say that the World Bank's report may
have been overzealous in painting a picture of African progress. "Turned a
corner?" chortled one American financier with decades of experience in
African aid projects. "This is a maze we're in here. There's going to be
lots of corners.
Greg Mills, director of the Brenthurst Foundation, a think tank
on strengthening African economic performance, argues that the most important
trend seen in the World Bank report is showing that Africa
can no longer be seen as a single entity.
"What the World Bank report is showing is the growing
differentiation in the African continent, and the different problems between
countries and regions," he says. "This is contrary to the notion of
African Unity."
There are commodity-producing countries like Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Sudan, and South
Africa, and agricultural powerhouses like Kenya and Tanzania. There are landlocked
nations like the Central African Republic,
with little access to global markets, and rapidly globalizing countries like South Africa, Mauritius,
Tanzania, and Benin.
Finally, there are countries like Nigeria,
Ethiopia, Sudan, and the
DRC that are so large and diverse that they are difficult to govern as a single
entity. While some of these larger countries often have valuable resources,
they will still have trouble emerging as winners in the global marketplace
unless they start to change their system of governance, Mr. Mills says.
"The critical elementary differences between [African]
countries are their regimes and their natural resources," says Mills.
"Since they can't change their size and resources, the one thing they can
change is the style of their government, and those that are generally
performing better are the latter group," which like Rwanda, South
Africa, Botswana,
and Uganda,
have instituted substantial governmental reforms.
Innovate - don't print money
Ross Herbert, head of a research project on governance at the
South African Institute for International Affairs in Johannesburg,
says that one of the best signs for Africa in
the past decade is that fewer African leaders solve their problems today by
printing more money.
But Africa's current prosperity
- largely the result of global demand for commodities such as natural gas, oil,
timber, copper, iron, coal, and cobalt - is a temporary window of opportunity
that analysts say should not be wasted.
"Africa has to go out into
the world and learn markets," says Herbert. "Chinese companies went
to Ghana
and studied kinte cloth, and now you can buy Chinese cloth that emulates
kinte that is cheaper than the local cloth."
"That is how competitive other countries are," he
says. "We have to choose ... to climb the ladder faster than other
countries. And no one, other than Zimbabwe, is standing still."
Lee Blumenschine
Northeast Regional Director
Better World Books