The continent of Africa is undoubtedly well endowed.
Both in the areas of human and natural resources, Africa is exceptionally well and lavishly blessed with a surfeit of stupendous wealth.
Why then is Africa said to be broke?
It is therefore paradoxically incongruous to mention the continent in the same sentence as poverty.
How can arguably the richest swath of real estate in the world be used as the basis to calculate poverty and deprivation?
Typical examples of this incongruity, are such countries as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Nigeria and Zimbabwe which are so heavily endowed, yet as home to citizens who still live below acceptable poverty line, by all international standards.
A few years ago, Nigeria was ignominiously designated as the ‘poverty capital of the world’, a title once held by India.
Around 2018, a Brookings Institution report using the World Poverty Clock (WPC) data crowned Africa’s most populous country – Nigeria – with this ignoble epithet.
As I travelled throughout Africa in the last several years – upwards of 50 years – my heart bled for my beloved continent.
What I see each time I visit is hope denied, despair entrenched, and fear enthroned. I see a picture of man’s inhumanity to man on full display.
I recently chanced upon a video online in which the narrator succinctly described the state of most of Africa’s metropolitan areas.
Personally, I found it heart wrenching.
From Accra, Conakry, Windhoek, Lagos, Yaounde to Johannesburg, Luanda, Dakar, Lusaka and other such cities, it was a kaleidoscope of depressing sights of slums and ghettos.
The most disgusting aspects of this video were images of people literally eating out of garbage cans and gutters. Literally.
It ought not to be so.
That we seem to tolerate this state of affairs in our continent in this time and age is not only unconscionable but criminal.
Our current crop of rulers (I hate to refer to them as leaders), should all bury their heads in shame.
I am sure there will be some armchair quarterbacks who will read this and push back.
Their usual jejune and worn out argument is that poverty is universal.
True.
But poverty has grades.
In developed and developing countries of the world that are far less endowed than many African countries, poverty is calibrated and safety nets are provided.
In most of the rest of the world, well appointed programs designed to take care of the inherently vulnerable members of the citizenry – the poor, the diseased and the disabled are functionally put in place.
Not so in most of Africa.
What obtains in most of the continent is a clear delineation between the haves and the have nots.
For instance in my country of birth, Nigeria, you have to be clinically blind not to see the clear dichotomy between the two percent segment of the population who live in obscene affluence and the dirt poor.
I must say that I am almost embarrassed and “flabber-whelmed” whenever I lead a delegation of potential investors to visit a number of African nations in my capacity as a managing partner of the investment arm of The African Times/USA.
My last such trip was in 2023.
This invariably brings me to a subject matter that is at core of this piece: the African Diaspora.
Although overused, misunderstood and misrepresented, the Diaspora in the African context, loosely refers to persons of African origin, extraction and heritage living outside of the continent.
According to available estimates, about 350 million people of African origin who represent roughly 23% of the Africa’s population live outside the continent.
They are presently citizens of such far-flung countries in South and Central America (especially in Brazil), the United States, Canada, the Caribbean, Europe, Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states.
The problem is that this invaluable human capital has been largely neglected and ignored.
Only once in a while do the powers-that-be in Africa pay lip service to the socioeconomic and political importance of her diaspora to the present, and the future of the continent.
For the life of me, I have never been able to comprehend the mindset that ignores perhaps the most important part of her godly endowment – human capital resources.
In 2004, Diaspora remittances alone to Africa reached a record high of approximately $90-$100 billion USD, surpassing foreign direct investment (FDI) and official development assistance (ODA), according to available data.
There has been a couple of half-hearted efforts directed at harnessing, and the tapping into a potential goldmine that is the Diaspora wealth, waiting to be mined.
On the sociocultural level, I commend the foresight of the organizers of the yearly ‘Beyond the Return’ events in Ghana, which is a follow-up to the runaway success of the seminal 2019 ‘Year of the Return’ campaign.
Challenged by the Ghanaian initiative, the Nigerians jumped into and joined in the campaign with what they nicknamed: ‘Detty December’ – which like the Ghanaian version is heavily characterized by the mass return of the Diaspora for holidays, concerts and social events.
As laudable as it has turned out to be, this Ghana-Nigeria private initiative does not even begin to scratch the surface of the kind of economic strides of which the continent is capable.
Add this to the rich mineral endowment of the continent, and I can wager on it that Africa could potentially become unstoppable as an economic powerhouse in the nearest future.
In her ranks, the African Diaspora boasts of some of the best brains in all fields of human endeavour.
In the United States alone, Black wealth accounts for three to four percent of US assets with an aggregate income estimated at over $900 billion.
Recent statistics show that the disposable income of African Americans ranges from $500 million to $1 trillion yearly.
Every time I attend an African American business conference, I am pelted with questions about “how to invest in the motherland without losing the shirt on my back”.
Same investor interests are also prevalent in the Caribbean among the African Diaspora.
As a matter of fact, I have a standing invitation to visit the almost forgotten Caribbean nation of Belize on the coast of the northern Central America, where its predominantly black population intrinsically traces their roots back to Africa.
The invitation is to assist this Caribbean nation to direct interest of the African business community to the massive investment opportunities which are awash within the scenic borders of Belize.
In conclusion, I cannot overemphasize enough the importance of the Diaspora population to the fortune and the future of our beloved Africa.
Need I reference the impact of the Chinese and Indian diaspora to the rapid transformation of their homeland?
Go no further than the global Jewry. Today’s Israel still exists because of the Jews in the Diaspora.
It isn’t still too late for us.
As a matter of fact, Africa and her Diaspora must reconnect at a various levels.
That is what needs to be done to make Africa great again.
Views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of TheCable.
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