SPECIAL REPORT EMERGING AFRICA March 2nd 2013 A hopeful continent 20130216_SRoffshore.indd 1 12/02/2013 15:39 SPECIAL REPORT EMERGING AFRICA A hopeful continent African lives have already greatly improved over the past decade, says Oliver August. The next ten years will be even better THREE STUDENTS ARE hunched over an iPad at a beach café on Sene• gal’s Cap•Vert peninsula, the westernmost tip of the world’s poorest con• tinent. They are reading online news stories about Moldova, one of Eu• rope’s most miserable countries. One headline reads: Four drunken soldiers rape woman. Another says Moldovan men have a 19% chance of dying from excessive drinking and 58% will die from smoking•related diseases. Others deal with sex•tracking. Such stories have become a staple of Africa’s thriving media, along with austerity tales from Greece. They inspire pity and disbelief, just as tales of disease and disorder in Af• rica have long done in the rich world. Sitting on the outskirts of Dakar, Senegal’s capital, the three stu• dents sip cappuccinos and look out over a paved road shaded by palm trees where restaurants with white tablecloths serve green• spotted crabs. A local artist is hawking framed pictures of semi• clad peasant girls under a string CONTENTS of coloured lights. This is where slave ships used to depart for the 3 Guinea•Bissau, Guinea and New World. Way over there, do Sierra Leone they know how much has Tired of war changed? asks one of the stu• 6 Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and dents, pointing beyond the oil Nigeria tankers on the distant horizon. Bye­bye Big Men This special report will paint a picture at odds with West• 8 Niger, Algeria, Libya, Egypt ern images of Africa. War, famine and Sudan and dictators have become rarer. Courage, mon brave People still struggle to make ends 9 Ethiopia and Kenya meet, just as they do in China and Doing it my way India. They don’t always have enough to eat, they may lack edu• 12 Zambia, Zimbabwe and cation, they despair at daily injus• Botswana tices and some want to emigrate. The wealth beneath But most Africans no longer fear a 13 South Africa violent or premature end and can hope to see their children do well. That Cheerleaders and naysayers applies across much of the continent, including the sub•Saharan part, the main focus of this report. African statistics are often unreliable, but broadly the numbers sug• gest that human development in sub•Saharan Africa has made huge leaps. Secondary•school enrolment grew by 48% between 2000 and 2008 after many states expanded their education programmes and scrapped school fees. Over the past decade malaria deaths in some of the worst•a ected countries have declined by 30% and HIV infections by up to 74%. Life expectancy across Africa has increased by about 10% and child mortality rates in most countries have been falling steeply. A booming economy has made a big di erence. Over the past ten years real income per person has increased by more than 30%, whereas in the previous 20 years it shrank by nearly 10%. Africa is the world’s fast• est•growing continent just now. Over the next decade its GDP is expected A list of sources is at to rise by an average of 6% a year, not least thanks to foreign direct invest• Economist.com/specialreports ment. FDI has gone from $15 billion in 2002 to $37 billion in 2006 and $46 An audio interview with billion in 2012 (see chart at the end of this article). the author is at Many goods and services that used to be scarce, including tele• Economist.com/audiovideo/ phones, are now widely available. Africa has three mobile phones for ev• 1 specialreports The Economist March 2nd 2013 1 SPECIAL REPORT EMERGING AFRICA M e d i t Democracies of varying shades TUNISIA e r r a 3.9 n e Hybrid regimes MOROCCO 10.8 a n N Ouargla Tripoli S e a Authoritarian regimes A 4.6 Benghazi E 32.5 Misrata C GDP, average annual % 0 0 O Ras Lanuf Ajdabiya change, 2002-12, estimate ALGERIA Cairo C 3.5 0.0 Population estimate, 2012 I L I B Y A or latest available, m T 36.5 E G Y P T N 3.4 4.6 Author’s route, with start A 6.6 L WESTERN 82.0 of each section T S A SAHARA H A Sources: IMF; World A R A Bank; The Economist *2010-12 5.9 MAURITANIA M A L I N I G E R Nile CAPE 0.5 4.5 VERDE 3.9 5.6 3.6 16.3 15.6 S U D A N 1.3 Cap Vert C H A D SENEGAL Agadez Khartoum ERITREA 5.7 DJIBOUTI 4.2 7.5 Dakar 4.3 THE GAMBIA 10.7 3.3 13.8 Metema 3.8 BURKINA 33.5 Blue 0.9 Bissau 5.9 FASO 1.8 Ziguinchor 2.6 Kano Nile 17.4 GUINEA 10.9 BENIN NIGERIA Conakry GHANA Addis GUINEA- CÔTE 3.5 Abuja 7.5 SOMALILAND BISSAU Freetown D’IVOIRE 7.2 Ababa 9.4 164.8 CENTRAL SOUTH SUDAN Ziway 2.5 SIERRA 1.5 24.9 ETHIOPIA Monrovia Lagos 1.7 AFRICAN -32.4 * mo 1.7 LEONE 23.4 White O 8.9 Accra CAMEROON 4.9 REPUBLIC 10.4 Nile 7.3 LIBERIA TOGO Onitsha 88.9 na Abidjan Takoradi 3.3 6.2 3.1 3.4 21.5 KENYA SOMALIA 9.6 4.0 go UGANDA Moyale 6.3 Con 4.6 7.0 7.2 42.1 Merille Mogadishu EQUATORIAL 10.8 GABON CONGO- 35.6 1.4 10.4 GUINEA 3.4 BRAZZAVILLE Mt Kenya EQUATOR 1.5 4.6 C O N G O RWANDA Nairobi I N D I A N 4.1 BURUNDI 2 ery four people, the same as India. By 2017 6.2 O C E A N 4.1 TANZANIA Mombasa SÃO TOMÉ 74.7 nearly 30% of households are expected to & PRÍNCIPE 8.8 6.9 3.1 have a television set, an almost vefold in• 5.4 43.0 Dar es Salaam 0.1 0.2 crease over ten years. Nigeria produces more SEYCHELLES movies than America does. Film•makers, novel• Tunduma ists, designers, musicians and artists thrive in a new ANGOLA MALAWI COMOROS climate of hope. Opinion polls show that almost two• 10.6 Ndola 5.7 1.8 thirds of Africans think this year will be better than last, 20.2 ZAMBIA 16.6 7.4 0.7 6.1 22.5 double the European rate. 13.9 E Harare U Africa is too big to follow one script, so its coun• Q I ZIMBABWE B tries are taking di erent routes to becoming better A BOTSWANA -2.8 M MADAGASCAR T places. In Senegal the key is a vibrant democracy. From A L NAMIBIA 12.6 3.7 Z 3.7 A the humid beaches of Cap•Vert to the yblown desert in• 4.9 O 22.4 N 1.9 2.2 M terior, politicians conduct election campaigns that West• T Gaborone ern voters would recognise. They make extravagant prom• I C Johannesburg km ises, some of which they will even keep. Crucially, they Soweto SWAZILAND 0 O 1.7 5 3 respect democratic institutions. When President Abdoulaye C 1.2 E S O U T H MAU RIT IUS Wade last year tried to stand for a third term, in breach of term A AFRICA 4.2 limits, he was ridiculed. A popular cartoon showed him in a bar N 1.3 3.4 4.1 LESOTHO ordering a third cup of co ee and removing a sign saying, Every• 51.2 2.0 one just two cups. More than two dozen opposition candidates Cape formed a united front and inicted a stinging defeat on him, Town which he swiftly accepted. Dakar celebrated wildly, then went Cape of Good Hope back to work the next day. At the end of the cold war only three African countries (out of 53 at the time) had democracies; since then the number has ris• deadly. Perennial hotspots such as Angola, Chad, Eritrea, Liberia en to 25, of varying shades, and many more countries hold im• and Sierra Leone are quiet, leaving millions better o , and even perfect but worthwhile elections (22 in 2012 alone). Only four out Congo, Somalia and Sudan are much less violent than they used of now 55 countriesEritrea, Swaziland, Libya and Somalialack to be. Parts of Mali were seized by Islamists last year, then liberat• a multi•party constitution, and the last two will get one soon. Ar• ed by French troops in January, though unrest continues. The mies mostly stay in their barracks. Big•man leaders are becoming number of coups, which averaged 20 per decade in 1960•90, has rarer, though some authoritarian states survive. And on the fallen to an average of ten. whole more democracy has led to better governance: politicians Second, more private citizens are engaging with politics, who want to be re•elected need to show results. some in civil•society groups, others in aid e orts or as protesters. The beginnings of the Arab spring in north Africa two years ago Ways to salvation inspired the rest of the continent. In Angola youth activists in• Where democracy has struggled to establish itself, African voke the events farther north. In Senegal a group of rap artists countries have taken three other paths to improving their citi• formed the nucleus of the coalition that ousted Mr Wade.