Picture this; a starving child sits alone with a swollen malnutritioned belly, flies settle on its heavy eyelids, a mother too tired and hungry to feed it, a father that was killed during a recent genocide, no hope of finding clean water and certainly no chance of getting an education.
Not a pretty picture, but nine times out of ten this seems to be the ‘image of Africa’ whenever 90% of the West considers the poorest continent on Earth; people that can’t help themselves, a population slowly falling into civil war over food and water supplies = perfect for saving by the Lord Gods’ 7th Day Angel Gabriel Southern Texas Chapter……or Madonna in Islam insulting shorts.
Whether a conspiracy of the global NGO’s, charities, churches, local corrupt governments or maybe even food companies, this image seems to be one of the greatest misconceptions of Modern day Africa and one that might actually be impeding growth. In fact Paul Theroux sums this up quite nicely in his Cairo to Cape Town journey;
“Africans seem to be the most lied to people on Earth; manipulated by their governments, burned by foreign experts, befooled by charities, and cheated at every turn. To be an African leader was to be a thief, but evangelists stole people's innocence and self-serving aid agencies gave them false hope, which seemed worse.”
Now this isn’t to say that genocide, famine and war don’t exist in Africa, or that all NGO’s are money laundering fraudsters; you only need to read about Dafur or Somalia to recognise that the aid agencies there are doing the best job they can under the circumstances. However it might come as quite a surprise to the majority of people living in the developed World to learn that officially 1/3rd of Africans are now classified as Middle Class. This statement, although correct might need some clarification;
According to the African Development Bank, nearly 313million people across the ‘Dark Continent’ now fall into the middle class bracket. That doesn’t mean to say that they all live in a semi in Woking, drive a Volvo and listen to Classic FM, but that they now sit within the group of people with the purchasing power to spend between $2 and $20 a day. Not a lot in London granted, but in Kampala for instance, $20 a day can buy you a hell of a lot of rice, beans and Matoke. In fact it can do more than that. The majority of ‘middle class’ Ugandans I know, have met or have cut me up at the roundabout, quite frankly shocked me; car ownership for instance is rocketing, and I don’t mean crappy beaten up Nissan Sunnys. I’m now not surprised when I pull up to the lights beside Range Rover Sports, Lexusesses…Lexi, or even BMW X6’s on a daily basis.
Uganda has a huge proportion of children – 50% are under 17 – no doubt as the result of a hugely improved health service and a much lower rate of AIDS in the past 20 years or so (pat on the back for the charities). All schools are fee paying, yet my firm alone has built or extended three medium to high end schools in the last two years and when I travel to work it is past streams of multi coloured and neatly cleaned and pressed school uniforms. A policeman may only earn 100,000 Shillings a month ($35), but 33% of his country can afford to be a member of a gym, own a set of golf clubs and spend the night watching Satellite TV; the same aspirations as most of Merseyside.
Yes there are drawbacks and plenty of arguments over this huge and sudden wealth increase. The poorer will suffer more as the gaps increase, consumption of energy will increase beyond production – think load shedding every other night in Kampala – But on the other hand maybe all of the Christian Missionaries’ kindly misguided trips over the past hundred plus years have finally paid off. Maybe Africans, so sick of the constant degrading sentiments towards this beautiful continent and friendly people, have been provoked to Africanise Western prosperity and allow them to harness the power and assistance offered to become successful and affluent. Well, this is what the charities and NGO’s wanted…wasn’t it? With the current problems with the Euro, maybe it isn’t the Africans that need saving anymore, and maybe, finally, that annoying Irish rock star in his mothers’ cataract glasses can shut up once and for all!
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