Africa: The Next Big Thing

AFRICA

The Next Big Thing

Chinese billionaire Jack Ma is bullish on Africa. The continent has 1.3 billion people. Forty percent are younger than 16. Six of the world’s 10 fastest-growing economies are in Africa. The upside is astronomical.

“Each time I go, I come away more convinced that Africa’s entrepreneurs will write the future of the continent,” the founder of online retailing giant Alibaba recalled in a New York Times opinion piece.

Ma is not alone. Facebook recently touted the latent potential of Africa, claiming to have trained more than 7,000 women-owned businesses on the continent in digital skills, World Politics Review wrote.

Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey said he would be moving to Africa for as long as six months this year, too. “Africa will define the future (especially the bitcoin one!),” he tweeted from Addis Ababa, according to the Guardian.

Brookings Institution scholar Landry Signé explained how Africa’s economy has slowly but surely developed, leading to more wealth and expanding markets for global goods. Investors have an opportunity to get in on the ground floor, he concluded. Quartz agreed.

Africans are working for a renaissance, too. Nearly 30 countries have ratified the African Continental Free Trade Agreement. In addition to creating a single market of more than one billion people worth $2.5 trillion, the pact will spur reforms in African economies, empowering private business to grow where the state has long wielded too much power and influence, said economist Paul Alaje in an interview with CNBC Africa.

A group of West African countries are also discussing a monetary union centered on a new currency, the eco, which would replace the CFA francs used in a collection of nations in West and Central Africa, CNBC reported. Those efforts are hitting snags as different leaders disagree on the details.

Still, at a time when protectionism has become the rage in Western capitals, Africa’s free trade plans appear to be a triumph for multilateralism, reported Xinhua. The Beijing-based, state-owned news agency’s readers would know that Chinese money has been especially active on the continent, investing in massive infrastructure projects while extracting natural resources.

Writing about Africa’s economic fortunes in the Hill, author K. Riva Levinson chose to highlight the recent revolution in Sudan, where democracy activists successfully ousted an autocrat and forced political change on the government. Sudan shows how, since entrepreneurs alone can’t necessarily fix bad governments, popular movements can, she argued.

Either way, it’s people power.

The Next Big Thing