

Africa Is Becoming the New China and India - ALee
http://www.newsweek.com/id/233501

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mattm
I lived in Nairobi for a few months in 2004, staying with host families. What
amazed me was how resilient the people are. The obstacles they have to
overcome on a regular basis are things we take for granted in the "West." Yet
the people don't complain and keep going forward. I thought that if ever the
infrastructure could be advanced to reduce those obstacles, we would see
places just take off.

At that time, there were lots of Internet cafes popping up all around the city
and cell phones were becoming quite common.

Since then, I know many Kenyans are now using their cell phones for mobile
banking and sending payments across the country to relatives and friends.
Technology is playing a big role in circumventing slow bureaucracies. Many of
my friends are now on Facebook when some of them didn't even have email in
2004.

I'm pretty confident we'll see some economically strong countries in Africa in
my lifetime.

------
maxklein
The real revolution in Africa happenned when it opened up to the world. Africa
has always been completely isolated from the rest of the world till very
recently. Recently, cellphones arrived, internet arrived, equal access to the
information on par with the Western countries arrived.

And the results are impressive: most of the wars have ended, the age of coups
is over, african professionals are going back, business is now being done with
countries from everywhere.

Africa is not yet a good investment opportunity, but it is the best market for
physical goods at the moment.

~~~
smallblacksun
"most of the wars have ended, the age of coups is over"

Really? There may be fewer wars, but there are still a lot (look at the list
of ongoing conflicts on Wikipedia). There was a coup in Niger a week or two
ago. Things may be getting better, but they are not good.

~~~
maxklein
Of the ongoing conflicts with 1000+ deaths per year, 6 are in Asia and only 2
are in Africa. And of those two the sudanese war, which has only resulted in
~2,500 deaths I'm not sure can be called a war.

Compare those with the wars of the 70s and 80s, I think this is a remarkable
period of stability.

The coup in niger was for an actual breach of democracy - the democratically
elected president tried to overstay his term, and he was stopped by the
military. Which is at it should be. They have also appointed a civilian prime
minister.

So things are a LOT better than before.

~~~
w00pla
> Of the ongoing conflicts with 1000+ deaths per year, 6 are in Asia and only
> 2 are in Africa.

Can you give a citation?

As an example, South Africa is basically engaged in a civil war with itself
(22,000+ people die violent deaths).

Zimbabwean life expectancy fell by more than 20 years - more people die there.
Zim is basically a civil war (which nobody would acknowledge). Eastern DRC -
easily more than a thousand, the same with Sudan.

Also note that sub-Sahara Africa only has a population of 700 million. Asia
has a population that is two to three times larger.

> The coup in niger was for an actual breach of democracy - the democratically
> elected president tried to overstay his term, and he was stopped by the
> military.

You are ignoring a few things - the ruling parties is becoming incredibly
intertwined with government (i.e. it is not democratic anymore, even if they
hold elections). Sure, it is a bit more stable - but I doubt that it is
better.

There were also recent coups in Mauritania, Madagascar.

~~~
maxklein
Citation: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_conflicts>

For people like you who want to believe that Africa is in a war, no citation
will do most likely.

The Asian wars are killing a hell of a lot more people than the African wars
also.

If you _want_ to believe that nothing is getting better, then let's not
continue the conversation. If you are willing to actually look at the facts
and compare the 80s to now, then we can talk.

~~~
w00pla
> For people like you who want to believe that Africa is in a war,

I happen to live in Africa. You ignored all of the examples I gave you.
Zimbabwe has probably one of the largest displaced populations in the word –
yet you do not view this as a “war”.

> Citation: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_conflicts>

Yeah, it doesn’t include Zimbabwe. It doesn’t include the eastern DRC. So you
use unfinished or badly written WP articles as your source? Or do you use an
extremely strange definition of conflict?

> The Asian wars are killing a hell of a lot more people than the African wars
> also.

Again, you are wrong. Firstly, of the Asian countries you mentioned, only
India counts as a 1000+ deaths per year (with a population of 1.5 times that
of sub-Sahara Africa).

> If you want to believe that nothing is getting better, then let's not
> continue the conversation.

You seem to base your argument on ignorance and self-delusion that is typical
of the African renaissance movement. So I doubt that this conversation would
be informative from your side.

> If you are willing to actually look at the facts and compare the 80s to now,
> then we can talk.

You made the statement “Of the ongoing conflicts with 1000+ deaths per year, 6
are in Asia and only 2 are in Africa.” which is blatantly false (by your own
citation). Sure the place stabilised since the 80ies – only because the USSR
fell (a major sponsor of conflict).

Then again, the 90ies an early 00ies were not particularly rosy (Rwanda, DRC
war).

~~~
maxklein
My citation says that there are 6 in asian and 2 in Africa. How is this false?
And Iraq has way more than 1000+ deaths a year.

Living in Africa does not make you an authority. Point to some proof for your
statements.

~~~
w00pla
> My citation says that there are 6 in asian and 2 in Africa. How is this
> false?

You use an extremely broad “definition” of Asia (i.e. instead of the Africa,
Middle-East, Asia) you group everything that is remotely in Asia as Asia. If
we take your definition into account, the population of Asia is 5.7 times that
of sub-Sahara Africa. You also conveniently leave out civil wars from that
list (e.g. Eastern DRC, Zimbabwe, etc…).

Why is Zimbabwe left out? Do you know that thousands of people either die
through state famine or killed by Zanu thugs?

> And Iraq has way more than 1000+ deaths a year.

Ahh… yeah an American war in the Middle East. Let’s group that with “Asia” and
compare a land-mass of 4 billion people to a continent of less than 1.

> Living in Africa does not make you an authority. Point to some proof for
> your statements.

I have shown you numerous shortcomings in your Wikipedia article. Yet you
persist to compare apples and oranges (sub-Sahara Africa is small compared to
Asia).

Maybe living in Africa (and having lived in various African countries) does
not make me an expert. But neither is someone who never even visited the
continent and relies on half-baked WP articles. You are in denial about Africa
and the violence in Africa.

From your posts I cannot determine if you are just extremely ignorant or if
you are a troll. For your part I hope that you are a troll.

------
w00pla
> Africa's most robust economies, such as those in Ghana, Botswana, and South
> Africa

South Africa is not nearly seeing a “brain gain”. We lose qualified
professionals to first world countries, yet only get semi-qualified people
from other African countries (a nett loss for Africa). Along with the little
qualified people that we get from other African countries, we also get 4
million+ illegal immigrants.

At almost all research institutions, the average age is high. South African
universities (the best in the continent) are dropping spectacularly off
international rankings (e.g. Shanghai Jiao Tong world ranking). All research
indicates that South African research is declining in both quality and
quantity (e.g. this article:
[http://www.up.ac.za/academic/iti/SA_Research_publication_rec...](http://www.up.ac.za/academic/iti/SA_Research_publication_record.pdf)
and other articles by the same author).

By and far, the industries in many African countries are driven by mining,
with the state creating an artificial middle class of useless civil servants.

The apparent growth that Africa experienced in the past 5 years is just an
extension of the commodity boom – the same structural problems remain.
Corruption is still there, education is still shit, etc… It can be said that
the countries are more stable – but that is all.

They leave out the Angolan example – the majority of investment in that
country is done by Chinese companies in exchange of oil.

> Aliko Dangote, Africa's richest black entrepreneur, has also cashed in on
> this consumer culture, with a net worth of $2.5 billion, according to
> Forbes.

They also leave out the part that he is heavily connected with the ruling
party of Nigeria. There are many entrepreneurs such as this – basically
African Oligarchy (other examples are Tokyo Sexwale, Patrice Motsepe, etc…).

\---

I may sound negative, but I really have doubts in the past year about the
future of South Africa in particular. It seems that corruption is now
completely untamed and the ruling party are infighting on who gets the spoils
of the government tenders (so called “tenderpreneurs”). The Mbeki government
at least had the decency to try and hide the corruption.

Secondary education is basically on the verge of death (in spite of ever
increasing allocation of budgets) and the government is doing its best to
destroy the last functional universities.

People on all sides of the spectrum in SA are starting to get sick of the
system. White people are sick of crime and taxation, poor black people are
sick of living in squalor (with nothing changing in the past 20 years). There
have recently been quite a few flair-ups of “service delivery” protests (black
people that protest because nothing is done to their plight – e.g. in Balfour,
Baberton, Khutsong etc..).

