Daniel Ibrahim

The Paradox of African Backwardness – And Its Cure (A Focus On Egypt, South Africa and Nigeria)

The three biggest economies in Africa are grossly flawed not just in their performance but also in their fundamentals. The economies of Egypt, South Africa and Nigeria are grossly dysfunctional. They are largely rentier state economies that are terribly rife with corruption as in the case of Egypt and Nigeria, where Nepotism and Cronyism define state-life to very abysmal extents, such as weak state institutions . Or as the case of crony- ridden capitalist economics in South-Africa, where ruling party stalwarts and henchmen get the best of it all, in a country where the ruling party has entrenched itself In the political landscape on the back of its anti-apartheid legacy—not on overwhelming economic performance. These three African economic juggernauts are all hit by corruption and cronyism, pork barrel politics and mediocrity. Why are these economies so terribly flawed?

Egypt being the oldest developing economy in Africa is stagnated, it is always lagging behind Nigeria or South Africa. The Egyptian economic space has military patrons, shadowlings and clients at the commanding heights of the economy, while religious fervor is used to bifurcate the country and keep its passionately divided people totally placid towards the morass that bedevils the country. South Africa the most industrialized economy on the continent is not the biggest because it is not inclusive, the black majority are still dormant bystanders in the economic game. And these are not just mere bystanders they are angry bystanders eager to vent their anger on other vulnerable people, like Somali and Nigerian immigrants. The Nigerian economy is struck and stuck in backwardness by directionless leadership , incompetence and corruption. As leaders come and go their cronies and clients get richer and richer at the expense of the state. The political economy of Nigeria is ill-marked by a crass and riveted focus on oil sales. The proceeds of these sales, sadly, are mostly diverted abroad instead of been used to diversify the economy. If oil sales drop the momentum for growth in Nigeria drops because in an economy where the government is the biggest earner and spender almost everything economic oscillates with the economic fortunes of government based on its sale of oil. From Cairo to Pretoria to Abuja there is a thorough-going spell of economic failure that doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon, except very solid measures of reform are taken. One of the key reasons for all these failures at development is that all of these economies have social settings that have to be culturally reset. How and why do they need this cultural resetting.

Let’s start with Egypt, for all its predominant outlook as a homogeneous nation(it is officially styled the Arab Republic of Egypt) , on state media and on paper , it is in fact a heterogeneous country where the rights and lives of the minority Coptics are seriously trampled upon, in a bid to wipe out the voice and identity of a people who predate the Arab majority in the country. This trampling reflects a culture of ethnic and religious machismo that silently underlies the military elitism that has consistently held Egypt by the jugular since the time of Ottomanic rule . The result is a nation of aggrandizing patrons towering over obsequious and obliging clients in running-scale from the top - the Presidency, down to the desks of the average bureaucrats in government offices. The deep effect is a rentier deep state that cannot harness the key economic products of the country such as tourism and cotton into higher GDP or GNI. The reset the country needs is to liberalize its political institutions and make the social space more inclusive, so it can tap the creative potential of its national minority, which is very promising indeed. Only a more open Egypt that collectively succeeds is the viable option that is possible for development.

South Africa ought to be in the lead on the continent but it is checkered. In spite of the sophisticated systems and infrastructure that it inherited from the apartheid era , the majority blacks lack the holistic capacity to transform this advantage into stable economic growth. Most of the country’s blacks still lack easy access to good education and sizable business capital. They are still caught up in the ethos and pathos of angst and resignation from the repressions of the apartheid era that has retarded their propensity for laser-sharp focused determination, the sort that propels many migrant minorities in South Africa to a more loftier perch above the black citizen majority. The country also has to look deeply into the issues of land and wealth redistribution but not with the swagger of the antagonistic past. The new approach to equality in South Africa should not alienate any segment of this multi – racial nation. The new approach has to be thoroughly scientific more than emotive. An approach that is backed by a thorough - going logic that harnesses and deploys public data and consciousness into new economic programs and projects that will pragmatically create wealth redistribution without friction.

Nigeria’s backwardness beggars belief and it is very unsettling. The country is the largest on the continent, in terms of population size and that human-mass is a potential social time bomb, for a nation that is grossly underdeveloped in spite of all its advantages. At the moment the country is the throes of a seemingly intractable insurgency to the north of the country, which is just part of the complex problems that are bedeviling the nation. The insurgency has raised the specter of fear that is deterring foreign direct investments and has stalled productive economic activity in the country’s northeast including the stoppage of the Trans-Sahara gas pipeline that was supposed to deliver Nigerian, Nigerien and Algerian gas to Europe under the auspices of Gazprom the Russian state oil company. For an oil dependent economy like Nigeria such loss of investment is indeed crippling. At the moment the country reels under a toxic debt burden, most of its national debt comes from Chinese sources. Cronyism and Nepotism are the building blocks of the state machinery from the very top to the bottom and this continues to flow in an unchecked cycle. The reset the country needs is to overhaul its civic culture to break its mold of ethnoreligious parochial-ism, which throws up ethnic and religious bigots as social champions seeking state power , who strongly seek power on the ethnic or religious platform but sadly for their own private interests. The Nigerian economy also needs to be diversified and technocratic competence has to be deepened in public institutions. The country should borrow a leaf of common sense from the Chinese when it comes to the state management of the economy, instead of borrowing more money from it.