The World Needs A Dynamic Africa

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SPEECH BY HIS EXCELLENCY, PROF. YEMI OSINBAJO, SAN, GCON, IMMEDIATE PAST VICE PRESIDENT OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA TITLED “THE WORLD NEEDS A DYNAMIC AFRICA” AT THE BOMA OF AFRICA EVENT HELD ON THE SIDELINES OF THE 6TH AFRICAN UNION MID-YEAR COORDINATION MEETING IN ACCRA, GHANA ON THE 21ST OF JULY, 2024

PROTOCOLS

Of the many stereotypes that we have to deal with in our quest to tell the full story of Africa, none are as grating as the ones that seek to portray Africa as a stagnant, unchanging, and predictable continent.

Like the 19^th century German Philosopher Hegel, who claimed that Africa had no share in world history, or his fellow European scholar, the historian Trevor Roper, who insisted that the history of Africa is simply the history of Europeans and their interventions on the continent. The analysis of change, transformation, and progress in Africa has all too often been trapped in Western, usually Eurocentric, lenses.

Let me regale you with a few examples; some of us might be familiar with the work of the British economic historian, Angus Maddison who is famous for his quantification of the size of economies through history using detailed descriptive charts and graphs. If you stare long and hard enough at his charts and graphs and concentrate on the parts dealing with Africa, a few things stand out. He describes a gradual transition from hunter-gathering into proper agriculture, which apparently takes off only when American crops are introduced into Africa.

As for educational levels he concludes that Africa was a story of universal illiteracy, except in the small inconvenient patch of Ethiopia, until Islamic colonisers from the Middle East arrived. Thereafter, he describes a long stretch of negligible advancements punctuated by the slave trade, European discovery of minerals and plantation crops, and then colonialism in the 19^th century. In fact, in Maddison’s view, colonialism is what introduced “dynamism” into Africa.

It is not then surprising that apart from the parts of northern Africa that he euphemistically terms, “Roman Africa”, Maddison’s work generally portrays Africa’s economic and geopolitical evolution as a static canvas with flatlines of income and capital growth. Looking at his texts and his charts, one would never guess in a million years that this was the same continent that saw the social, cultural, and political upheavals marking the rise and fall of kingdoms like the Kanem-Bornu Empire, Songhai, Mali, Kong, Asante, Dahomey, Yoruba, Swahili, Zulu or Cabinda. All you see are flatlines, slow curves, compressed trends, and the calculus of zeroes. Zero growth, zero heights, zero scales, zero promise, zero dynamism.

According to Maddison, from 1 AD to 1870 AD, per capita GDP in Africa moved from $472 to just $500. A progress of $28 in nearly 2000 years. In his view, the continent’s GDP per capita only saw movement during the colonial period, by the end of which it had barely doubled.

For one familiar with this conventional narrative, it is easy to become desensitized to their 20^th and 21st-century equivalents.

According to McKinsey, over the last 3 decades, Africa’s GDP per capita has increased by just 1.1%. Of course, that this level of performance is shared with India is barely mentioned.

Africa’s share of global macroeconomic output in key categories such as value-added trade is also usually presented as being stagnant, never rising above 4% or falling below 2% for decade-long stretches. And generally, in all these studies, Africa’s share of global investment flows seems condemned to exhibit the same stagnant pattern. Share of air passenger numbers, flat. Share of global tourism dollars, flat. Share of high-quality journal publications, flat.

While one does not spurn quantitative indicators or dismiss out of hand the importance of numerical measures, I think there is something fundamentally faulty about telling the story of a whole civilization in broad sweeps despite the complex social, economic demographic, geopolitical intellectual and spiritual factors at play.

These narratives of stagnancy or lack of progress do not properly reflect Africa’s place in the world now, and most importantly, the near future. For example, fixating on Africa’s share of global merchandise trade could easily blind an observer to the fascinating changes that are happening at the level of intra-African trade. You may not notice that as much as 41% of Africa’s machinery exports are traded within the continent. So also, are 35% of biopharmaceutical goods and 30% of industrial chemicals.

And there are dramatic changes even in the available institutional tools for facilitating intra African trade and investment flows and reducing bottlenecks. AFREXIM has for example, operationalized its Africa Trade Gateway (ATG), which is an ecosystem of digital platforms, including the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System – PAPSS, the MANSA platform which is a Customer Due Diligence Repository and, the Trader Club which comprises a Trade Information Portal and a Trade Regulations Platform.

Or if during the pandemic, you choose to dwell on the fact that Africa had some of the lowest vaccination rates and vaccine procurement numbers, you may miss the more useful point that through the collaboration of PanaBIOS and the Africa CDC, brokered by AfroChampions, Africa also built and deployed the world’s first Vaccine Passport. The PanaBios platform digitally connected labs and port health facilities, as well as pathogen genomic centres in 20 countries in Africa.

Or knowing that Africa’s historic share of the global supply of rare earth metals has been marginal and is insignificant today, whilst China’s share exceeds 60% may seem like emphatic knowledge. But look closely and you will realise that Africa’s projected supply growth is among the highest in the world, and the continent will soon account for 10% of output.

Besides, Africa’s share of critical minerals is huge. Africa is home to 30% of the world’s critical mineral reserves, many of which – cobalt, lithium, graphite manganese, and nickel, are essential to renewable and low-carbon technologies and the global value chains for processing of critical minerals.

And again, it may be easy to miss the green shoots we are seeing in manufacturing in this sector, for example, battery grade manganese, and some nickel are being processed, along with lithium ion batteries, and vanadium electrolyte for flow batteries.  Also, the African electric motorcycle industry is growing fast. Companies such as Ampersand in Rwanda, MAX in Nigeria, Bodawerk in Uganda, ARC in Kenya, and Agilitee in South Africa are part of a rapidly growing African electric motorcycle industry which is run by mostly young innovative entrepreneurs presenting convincing business cases and then there are others who are producing new electric motorcycles or retrofitting conventional ones with electric motors.

Also, several companies across the continent, such as Kira Motors in Uganda are converting internal combustion engine buses and light trucks into electric vehicles. These developments show that entrepreneurial, technical and manufacturing capabilities exist and can be scaled up with imaginative policies, finance and infrastructure.

That Africa has historically been the commodity extraction destination for its colonizers in the industrialized world for generations is commonplace, but it is perhaps more important to know that today, over 42% of African countries outside of North Africa, have laws and policies banning raw export of ores, and insisting on some processing or beneficiation before exports. Or that in the area of green sources of energy, in the past five years, there has been tremendous growth in the blue and green hydrogen industry, with many green hydrogen projects in Africa reaching Final Investment Decision (FID). Angola, Namibia, and South Africa are already invested.

Namibia in May last year signed a $10billion deal with Hyphen Hydrogen Energy to continue with advanced feasibility studies towards the development of its green hydrogen plant which when done, will produce 300,000 tons of green energy annually using wind and solar.

Angola is set to become the first exporter of green ammonia to Germany by 2025, the full capacity of its green hydrogen plant is planned to produce 280,000 tons annually, and South Africa is planning to produce 5million tons of green hydrogen annually by 2040. Other countries such as Egypt Kenya, Morrocco, and Mauritania have green hydrogen production goals.

Again, knowing that Africa’s share of global aviation has stayed at 2% or that its share of global tourism receipts hasn’t risen much from 3% is not as useful as knowing that between 2022 and 2023, quarter-by-quarter growth in South African domestic tourism exceeded 30%. Or that in a growth spurt between 2005 and 2013, international tourist arrivals in sub-Saharan Africa saw an upsurge of nearly 55%, outperforming every other region.

This is the kind of dynamic knowledge about dynamical shifts in a dynamic continent that better prepares the mind for the real opportunities that Africa holds for trade, investment and global growth. Real insight about Africa’s ongoing transformation lies in learning to discern the patterns within the patterns, the shift from one lens to another, the powerful undercurrents bubbling beneath the surface. The dynamism that matters.

As the world itself confronts unprecedented turbulence in the coming years, from climate change to artificial intelligence and from the social blowback of a rapidly ageing workforce to novel zoonotic pandemics, the time has come for Africa’s unique role to be better appreciated.

It is already stale news that by 2050, as much as one-quarter of the planet’s workforce is likely to be of African origin. Of the youthful workforce, in particular, as much as 42%, may be in Africa. On this score, both history and present trends amply bear testimony. What many have not fully appreciated however is that rigorous research has shown that merely leveraging on the current pace of development gains, could translate that demographic dividend into an additional 15% in GDP volume growth.

An energetic pool of youthful talent fortified with fast advancing artificial intelligence and the geo-engineering edge of a world desperately in need of a new economic growth paradigm, is an edge that the rest of the world ignores at great risk.

In Nigeria between 2015 and 2019 and between two recessions, we saw the emergence of 6 unicorns, tech or tech-enabled companies valued at over a billion dollars. All of those companies were founded by entrepreneurs all under the age of 35 at the time they founded the companies.

Today, there are nearly 500 active tech hubs all over Africa. Just this year, the UNDP supported $1biillon Africa Innovation Foundation was launched.  This is the largest facility in the world for supporting the Africa innovation ecosystem. Timbuktoo currently has 8 sector specific hubs, which are designed to be pan-African Centres of Excellence in their respective verticals; a global African virtual innovation hub is a vital part of the ecosystem.

The major mandate of this pan-African effort is to fix the fragmented innovation ecosystem, and to enable African innovators to benefit from existing and future synergies.  It is also true that Africa alone has the biodiversity reserves and scale of natural capital to reverse the centuries of ecological erosion that the unbridled carbon-laden industrialization of yesteryears has inflicted on this fragile planet.

But two issues emerge from this;  the first is that Africa’s role as either the solution to the climate crisis or its nemesis must be recognized. What does this mean? Some of the best research we are seeing suggest that if Africa were to pursue the same carbon intensive trajectory of wealthier countries to attain middle to high income status, it will pump 9.6 million gigatonnes of co2e into the atmosphere and by 2050, will be responsible for 75% of global emissions! Ultimately making it impossible for the world to attain its net zero objectives by 2050.

So, the only way the world can achieve net zero by 2050 is if Africa pursues a climate positive growth plan. Happily, the African Union endorsed this new paradigm last September in Nairobi at the Africa Climate Summit.

The Climate Positive Growth paradigm means for example, that by using renewable energy for the on-shore processing of 110 million tons of bauxite to aluminium, currently exported as raw bauxite from Africa to Europe and Asia, between 1.3 to 1.5 gigatonnes of CO2e emissions can be avoided annually.

In fact, by aggressively deploying its renewable energy resources, Africa can provide clean energy to all Africans, 600million of whom currently do not have access to energy and 150million of whom have unreliable access to energy, at a 30% lower cost and with over 90% lower emissions per kWh, compared to the current stated policy.

But to achieve the goal of climate-positive growth, we need a grand bargain with the global north. What are the terms of this bargain?  African countries on our part will formulate clear science-based national strategies for climate-positive growth.

The strategies will be linked to specific targets for net negative contributions to global emissions. We must create enabling legal and policy environments for investment. The international community on its part will undertake to make the required investments in Africa’s renewable energy and work out trade rules that would give access to favour low emissions production and facilitate the rapid development of fair and equitable carbon markets. This is the realistic win-win pathway to net zero by 2050.

Clearly, then the world needs a strong, dynamic green industrial Africa. Africa is possibly the only region that is free of the vested interests and sunk-cost mentality that has locked this planet into an ever-accelerating death spiral of climate disaster, poisoned oceans, nuclear cataclysms, and geopolitical deadlocks.

Only an Africa freed from its historic marginalization can afford to lead the world down the path of genuine course correction that may well save this planet.  But how do we get there? Statesmanship is what we badly need.  Both the wealthier world and Africa require statesmen and women! It is statesmanship that will enable leaders of the wealthier world to see that the self-interest of nations and regions to the exclusion or disadvantage of others will simply not work. Our world is now far too interconnected.

It is global statesmanship that will enable the recognition that Africa holds the key to global development and must be resourced to do so. We cannot have long arguments about the obvious need for a rethink of the international financial architecture.

A system that currently makes borrowing from Africa 8 times costlier than countries of other regions is untenable.  Also, how can you fairly value Africa’s GDP today without factoring in the sequestration capacity of our carbon sinks which we are being told to preserve in the interest of global environmental safety? Who pays for the opportunity cost of not exploiting these resources in the interest of all? For Africa, we need African Economic Statesmen.  Champions of African economic cooperation, prepared to make the selfless sacrifices that individual nations must make to be able to eat from a much bigger and more lasting pie.

Then in addition, for Africa three things are required; 1. Collaboration 2. Collaboration 3. Collaboration. Our strength lies in our ability to work together, intra-African trade, intra-African infrastructure, we must work together on trade negotiations with the regional blocks of the world.

A fragmented Africa is of little benefit to Africa and surely cannot benefit the world.  Certainly, the world needs a dynamic and united Africa.

Thank you.