by JOLYON FORD
In June 27’s New York Times, well-known African aid sceptic Dambisa Moyo attempted a corrective analysis. I will leave the reader to make their own minds up on her statement, in the context of legitimacy issues, that ‘despite all the scaremongering, China’s motives for investing in Africa are actually quite pure’.
What struck me about the piece was its failure — for someone so publicly committed both to the uplift of the continent and to dispelling false narratives which currently prevail — to interrogate some rather basic questions that go beyond headline investment and trade figures in the China-in-Africa story.
That story is both captivating and complex, but inputs like Moyo’s risk missing the point. An op-ed about new foreign investment in Africa in the last decade would do better by asking questions, rather than buying into narratives about strategic gaming by major powers and its incidental benefits for Africans.
What is the real story of the upsurge in investment, whatever its source? Has the quality of African growth (that is, the structural diversity of its sources) been improved by such investment, or has only the quantity of growth improved, on otherwise largely unchanged axes?
How much capital leaves Africa each week — by licit or illicit means — whatever the succession of stories of capital coming in? How inclusive has the new growth been, and what has acted to off-set its supposed benefits?
To what extent have inflationary effects nullified the local livelihood and wealth gains of recent years, whatever the high GDP figures involved?
As a rather blunt measure of national income, does annualised GDP indeed give an accurate measure of the net effect on a country’s national wealth produced by the export of unprocessed finite resources?
What has really been the net effect of the wave of African investment stories on local job-creation?
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