The Donkey and the Thorn Tree: Reappraising Globalisation and Africa

Africa is vulnerable to a perfect storm which comprises a burgeoning youthful population, insufficient infrastructure, benign donor neglect and more malign foreign interference, much of which can be traced to decades of weak economic performance. African excuses for such failure have focused largely on external factors. But countries from similar domestic environments and in the same world order across Asia, Europe and Latin America have developed in leaps and bounds. This would suggest that, for at least some countries, Africa is poor because its leaders have chosen the wrong path. This essay provides a reappraisal of globalisation vis-à-vis Africa, arguing that the continent does not have too much globalisation, but too little in the form of open competition for business and markets, and that politics, not economics, is the principal development impediment. Examples on the continent (Somaliland) and elsewhere (Singapore) illustrate what impact effective politics can have, highlighting that a major challenge for Africa is an inability to create regional exemplars of prosperity that other states can emulate and feed off in a positive cycle of development. To this end, getting the (democratic) politics right in Africa makes good development sense.