Africa's Futures: from North – South to East – South?

Abstract

This article contests dominant projections of Africa's future, most notably the Afro-pessimism that permeates almost all Northern analyses. While long-term data do confirm the continent's developmental impasse, they also dispute the dominant argument that Africa has been isolated and disengaged from the world economy. Indeed, Africa has been increasingly engaged with—and impoverished by—its relationships with Europe and North America. African scholars, recognising this dilemma, call for a return of the ‘developmental state’. This recommendation, however, like Afro-pessimist projections, fails to take into account fundamental transformations in Africa's geostrategic and world-economic relationships. The implications of two key, global transitions are traced for Africa and particularly South Africa: first, the disruptive power of global social movements; second, the rise of Asia and the demise of US and European hegemony over Africa.

Notes

1 Unless otherwise noted, ‘Africa’ includes all of continental Africa.

2 The following figures differ from those provided by the World Bank in Broadman (2007), despite being derived from the same IMF data source; all of continental Africa is included here.

3 Chinese investment in Africa pales by comparison with trade and is more difficult to track; for estimates and trends see Broadman (2007: 86 – 94, 289 – 304).

4 This reflects apartheid legacies: in 1996 whites made up 11% of the population, for example, but held 77% of all doctorate degrees; Africans held barely over 10% of the doctorates (hsrc, 2004: 38 – 39). Even more startling and unexplained were mid-2003 census data which suggested that almost one million whites had left the country in the preceding few years, out of a total white population of five million persons—with the number of English- and Afrikaans-speaking South Africans in the country sharply dropping (The Economist, 12 July 2003; Statistics South Africa, 2001). Surveys of young South African doctors at the end of their required year of community service show this institutionalised racism with a vengeance: the proportion of doctors responding that they intend to leave South Africa and work overseas rose from 34% in 1999 to 43% in 2001; over half of the white doctors intended to leave as opposed to only 10% of African doctors (Reid, 2003: 145).

5 By 2005 South Africa was exporting R47 billion to Africa, or 15% of its total exports (more than all exports to North America and South America), while importing only R16 billion of goods, less than 4% of South Africa's imports). South Africa's share of imports from surrounding states by comparison was, in 2004, 45% of Mozambique's imports, 33% of Malawi's imports, 32% of Zimbabwe imports, and 10% – 15% of the total imports of Angola, Kenya, Mauritius, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Tanzania (South Africa, Department of Trade and Industry ‘South African Trade Statistics', online at http://www.thedti.gov.za/econdb/raportt/rapmenul1.html#13/).