Generalising about Africa means The Economist magazine often gets it wrong. However, this time it might well be right.
Has The Economist magazine ever been more wrong about anything than it has been about Africa? Please don’t misunderstand, I love The Economist. I’m a subscriber and have been for years. The Economist’s articles about America and Europe are interesting, entertaining, thought-provoking – everything that is the best about smart, business-savvy journalism.
Yet, whenever The Economist decides to devote a cover to Africa, which it seldom does, I sigh a little inside. The two stand-out blunders the “paper”, as it calls itself, has made this time are emblematic not only of the dynamics of the publication, but of the views and prejudices of their urban, developed world readers.
In 2000, the cover was emblazoned with the words, “The Hopeless Continent”. It was exactly at that point that African growth took off. The explosion of manufacturing and building that took place in China and Asia generally underpinned the nascent business environment on the continent, since they were predominantly involved in resource extraction. But while mining underpinned African economies, including ours in the 2000s, the change was exacerbated by urbanisation, population growth, the spread of democracy and a host of…
