A crisis of image: achieving Africa's potential.

There has recently been a revival of interest in Africa's economic potential on the part of international players. Indeed there have been many insinuations that the prevailing post-Cold War assessment of the continent as a place fit for little more than humanitarian concern may be changing. Perhaps we who are her sons and daughters can now derive some comfort from the fact that Africa is once more being appreciated as a place for economic and political competition. But the real question is whether mother Africa is becoming attractive, maybe even respectable, in the eyes of the international community. Regardless of the ultimate answer to this question, there is certainly something going on: a confluence of internal developments, external desires, and renewed opportunity.

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One obvious factor in this recent development is the growing global demand for various commodities. To a considerable extent, this is being driven by economic growth in historically non-traditional markets for Africa's exports. This trend has coincided with the emergence of wider possibilities and challenges for the continent, resulting from the development of an increasingly globalized world. Within Africa, economic growth rates have risen and have contributed to the emergence of new openings for trade and investment. This general rejuvenation has furthermore been accompanied by enhanced levels of stability and good governance. The majority of sub-Saharan African states have experienced peaceful transitions of power over the last decade. But while the case for Africa as a place of opportunity is increasingly being supported by a multiplicity of positive indices, it nonetheless remains at variance with the still prevailing image of the continent as hopelessly trapped in a cycle of poverty, pestilence, corruption, social instability, and war.

Much of the popular interest to be found in the Western media regarding Africa's supposed courtship has been generated by China's emergence as an increasingly significant player, both in Africa and the world in general. My quick count of online news listings on "courting Africa" earlier this year revealed that nearly three-quarters of the relevant articles referred to expanded Sino-African cooperation. Yet while China's wooing of Africa is in itself worthy of consideration, the phenomenon ought to be understood within its broader context. When looking objectively at current economic and political trends on the continent, it is soberingly clear that Africa's emerging promise has heretofore resulted in relatively modest levels of trade and investment, especially from those quarters that have had a greater longstanding interest in its affairs.

The Importance of Image

For all that has so far been written and said about Africa's growing prominence, there is an obvious paradox in observing the gap between promise and delivery. Not long ago the US Government's Overseas Private Investment Corporation observed that while Africa now offers the highest rate of return in the world on foreign direct investment, it nonetheless attracts the lowest volume of capital inflow.

This is supported by the most recent World Bank World Development Indicators, which show that in 2004 sub-Saharan Africa attracted only 1.8 percent of the global flow of foreign direct investment, down from 2.3 percent in the 1980s, which is commonly described as Africa's "lost decade." This is notwithstanding the fact that total investment flow in absolute terms rose from only US$1.2 billion in 1990 to a still modest US$11.3 billion in 2004. In addition, according to the World Bank, sub-Saharan Africa's percentage of world trade has stagnated in recent years at approximately 1.5 percent, only about half what it was in the 1950s.

My own country, Botswana, has been rated as the world's number one destination for mining investment in a global risk survey by Resourcestocks, while a recent Carnegie Endowment study found that we were fourth in the world in overall return on investment income. Our sovereign credit ratings have remained consistently high, while our stock exchange was among the top 10 global performers last year. Whereas the Dow Jones is said to have performed well in 2006 with an average return on investment of 16 percent, the same figure for the Botswana Stock Exchange was 74 percent, albeit with a much smaller volume of trade.

Yet, notwithstanding the above accomplishments in international ratings for sound economic policies, political stability, and general good governance, until recently we too have had modest success in wooing outside investors. Total FDI in Botswana in 2004 is reported to have stood at only US$47 million, down from US$96 million in 1990, although I am happy to acknowledge that the latest forecasts are more encouraging.

Given Africa's apparent fate to be forever the bridesmaid rather than the bride of globalization, perhaps the question should be rephrased. Rather than speculating as to why Africa is being courted today, perhaps analysts and policymakers should begin to ask why she has not yet attracted more serious suitors in the first place.

A growing number of observers have linked Africa's inability to realize its trade and investment potential to its delinquent image. As media analyst for Africainvestor Natalie Maule wrote in November 2006, "Africa is not short of stories, many of which make front page news. Yet all too often it is short of the right stories, partly as a result of the entrenched mentality on the part of Western editors to abide by the mantra 'if it bleeds it leads.' Child soldiers, people dying of AIDS, emaciated babies--these images flood our television screens and the pages of European and American newspapers with dizzying frequency." Maule concludes by calling on Africans to become more proactive in marketing themselves. She writes that "every unreported success story costs us jobs, as investors continue to focus their efforts on more high-profile investment destinations. The African private sector must learn to shout about its successes, and the world will listen."

This is certainly good advice, but it is easier said than done. Africa's effort to collectively redefine its global image faces a number of challenges, not the least of which is its own limited abilities of communication. According to the International Federation of Journalists, despite the explosion in global communication brought about by the application of new technologies, most of the world's information flow is channeled through a handful of transcontinental conglomerates before being further filtered through less than 50 major national and regional players. Significantly, none of these principal publishers is based between the Sahara and the Limpopo.

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I recognize that this "trickle down" scenario runs somewhat against more positive prognostications of the Internet as a transformative information highway driven by individual initiative. Perhaps current trends online are leveling global communications. But in Africa at least, this remains more of a promise for the future than a reflection of reality.

The image of Africa promoted by contemporary mainstream media is one of conflict and crisis. There is a cynical element to this too. Indeed, quite beyond the occasional positive news story, it is becoming increasingly common for African states and institutions to be inundated with briefcase marketing teams eager to sell special commercial supplements or broadcast segments for various news bureaus or publications. I understand that this phenomenon is by no means confined to our continent. The lines between the editorial and "advertorial" are becoming increasingly indistinguishable, as information is marketed as a commodity rather than simply as "news." Yet, given our financial limitations, this trend puts Africans at an added disadvantage.

A Continent, Not a Country

Another facet of Africa's image problem is outsiders' popular ignorance of the fact that it is a vast and diverse continent. Almost as large as Asia in its geographic extent, Africa is home to nearly 800 million citizens of 53 different countries. The generalizations that are often made about her capacity and will are therefore subject to a multitude of exceptions. Yet, notwithstanding its size and diversity, there is a tendency among even informed observers to homogenize Africa's collective experience to a much greater extent than in other regions of the world.

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There is, of course, no dearth of examples that can be cited to substantiate negative views of Africa, but there is a tendency to magnify the weight of such evidence by loosely identifying specific with general circumstances. There is an overwhelming number of instances online in which the word "African" is paired in conjunction with "conflict," with such headings as "African conflict systems," "managing African conflict," and "African conflict resources." Included in the latter category are hundreds of thousands of references to "African conflict diamonds."

I happen to be the leader of an African country that is the world's largest producer of diamonds by value. As such, I head an elected government that depends primarily on the diamond industry as a source of public revenue. It is in this context that I find the suggested existence of African conflict diamonds, as opposed to diamonds illicitly traded from this or that particular area of conflict, unsettling.