The African Dream
- Posted on:
- October 5, 2011 at 11:18 p.m.
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- http://es-africa.com/articles/trackback/african-dream/
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- DiasporaNews
The American Dream may look worn and tired, but Sarah Rundell finds a generation of business executives, returnees and hopefuls daring to create an African Dream to spur on the continent.
One of Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan’s recent election slogans read: "I once had no shoes. If I can make it, you can too." The message from the man who grew up in a fishing village that anything is possible is reminiscent of the American Dream. Coined in the 1930s by the historian James Truslow Adams as "a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement," the American Dream helped rally America through the Depression and has shaped American capitalism, spawning enormous wealth.
At a time when the American Dream looks worn and tired, some of Africa’s leading thinkers are defining what it means to be African. A one-size-fits-all phrase is difficult to conjure given the continent’s complex and rich tapestry of countries. For many, the enduring struggle to find a job, food for the table, or muster resources for their children’s education makes loftier thoughts seem ridiculous.
"The African Dream is to improve the wellbeing and the aspirations of the people of Africa," says Arnold Ekpe, CEO of Ecobank, Africa’s largest independent regional banking group.
Africa increasingly speaks with one voice through organisations like the African Union and regional economic groupings. Investors don’t see 48 individual sub-Saharan economies. It is Africa’s massive combined market of a billion they are chasing.
Brain gain, opportunity, and dominant regional businesses with growing international reputations like MTN, Dangote, Orascom, Oando and Ecobank, also knit the continent together. It makes a collective concept defining what Africans want and what they believe in increasingly compelling.
Home from home
For decades, Africa has lost many of its brightest stars to Western countries keen to attract skilled labour. Now the desire to give something back is leading to a "brain gain".
Nigerian Oswald Guobadia swapped a job at Goldman Sachs in New York to found his technology company, DBH Solutions, in Lagos. "I often think that I would be on my MD track by now if I’d stayed with Goldman. But the opportunity is truly unique here because you are creating something from scratch. You have to bring everything yourself - even the bricks - but it is worth it."
Seeing opportunity in placing returning Diasporans, Ghanaian Asiedua Amoah has returned to Accra after living in the US to set up her own recruitment company, Hired Capital. "More and more people are coming back. For many, working back in Africa feels more meaningful and relevant," she says.
Former World Bank economist Eleni Gabre Madhin, now founder and CEO of the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange, says she was motivated to come back after 30 years living in the US to apply her expertise in agriculture and economics to help solve the challenge of food distribution in Ethiopia. She says more than a million people died in the 1994 famine, not because there wasn’t enough food, but because people in the north couldn’t access the food surplus in the fertile south. Three years old, the exchange has traded 600,000 tonnes of commodities valued at US $1 billion so far.
Consumer continent
Life is changing fast. A survey by consultancy AT Kearney found that eight out of nine west African subsidiaries of global consumer goods companies’ revenues grew more quickly than their parent companies.
"People want things like soaps and nappies, they want medicines, clean water, good quality but cheap food," says Jeremy Sampson at consultancy Interbrand in Johannesburg, who has charted the arrival of global consumer product groups onto African soil to meet new consumer demand. Drinks group SABMiller - which now derives one-third of its earnings from the continent - Nestlé, Procter and Gamble and many others are pushing strategies that service Africa’s massive consumer market where the bulk of the population is young.
Elsewhere, the dream of home ownership is being turned into a reality by investors like Russian bank Renaissance Group, behind Kenya’s first purpose-built city, Tatu City. When construction is finished it will be the kind of place where people have their own front door, car parking, electricity and easy access to schools, work and shopping. Residential and corporate development Roma Park in Lusaka promises more of the same with a mall, leisure complexes and office space.
"In Africa, what you have at the moment is satellite TV for the elite. We want to hit the mass market with pay TV," says Richard Bell, CEO of East African Capital Partners, whose Wananchi Group has just raised $57.5 million to expand its fibre infrastructure and launch a satellite pay-television service across east Africa. The new service will offer pay-per-view and multiple TV channels, broadband and a phone service for as little as $10 a month.
Delivering a billion
African nations do not yet pull together as a collective economic group of countries that could better lure investment and development. Intra-regional trade accounts for only 9% of Africa’s total commerce today, according to UN trade body UNCTAD. Regional trade blocks like the EAC, which has a population of 126 million and GDP of $75bn, SADC and COMESA are starting to change this.
"We need to make Africa’s one billion people a reality. If I invest in Nigeria I also want to be able to invest in the whole of Africa," said Strive Masiyiwa, founder and CEO of Econet Wireless, speaking in the London office of one of his many subsidiaries, Liquid Telecom. He doesn’t propose political integration in such a diverse continent, but urges an increased willingness among African nations to reach collective decisions to solve the continent’s own challenges. "To pull ourselves out of poverty we have got to deal with our own problems. It sounds optimistic but what I am talking about is a growing consciousness to show the world that we are a billion people."
Elsewhere, experts dream of Africa finding its own solutions to problems and backing wealth creators rather than just consumers; something that is starting to happen with initiatives like the Harith-managed $625m Pan African Infrastructure Development Fund, the continent’s only 15-year fund and 100% capitalised by Africans. Or organisations like Shanduka, new owners of McDonalds across Africa; Helios Investment Partners, aggregating more than $1.7bn in capital commitments, leading a growing crop of independent African private equity investment firms founded and managed by Africans.
Other indigenous organisations include African-founded and led Oando, a pan-African oil and gas group with a market cap of ZAR 4.34bn ($640m); Ecobank, a leading pan-African banking corporation operating in more than 30 countries across Africa; Dangote, the pan-African conglomerate operating across the continent in the food and infrastructure sectors, and the likes of MTN from South Africa, pioneering and revolutionising telecoms investment and consumer revolutions through mobile telephony across the continent.
Home-grown social investment and philanthropy is already helping to give more Africans a leg up. The former head of Nigerian bank UBA, Tony Elumelu, has set up a foundation in his name to promote business leadership and entrepreneurship. Celtel founder Mo Ibrahim’s foundation offers the largest, annually awarded prize in the world to Africa’s outstanding leaders to promote governance. Nigerian Aliko Dangote’s philanthropic interests include fostering young leaders and helping tackle unemployment through SME lending.
The American Dream was a rallying call that united a continent and powered its economic growth. If there was ever a time for Africa to be defining itself in a similar way, it is now. Trying to find one phrase for the poverty of rural Ethiopia and the energy and opportunity of Lagos isn’t easy, but contemporary Africa is starting to declare what it stands for, at home and abroad. Our poll finds a continent where young executives take a uniquely African approach to growing their companies and investors tap incredible opportunity.
Diasporans are flocking home, leaders are working to erase trade barriers, domestic companies are translating growth opportunities and the focus is increasingly on wealth and job creation, as opposed to consumerism and job-taking. Africa’s image is changing towards Africa PLC, to reflect its optimistic, engaged and worldly new generation
Credits: Sarah Rundell
3 comments:
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