Colin: While much of the world has been stagnating, economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa has been rising at an impressive rate — almost 5 percent in fact — which is actually better than the best country in the OECD. So is this a short-term wonder or is this something that will last for only a couple of years or so? Welcome to agenda. Joining me this week to discuss this issue is Mark Schroeder, Stratfor’s Africa analyst.
Colin: Mark welcome.
Mark: Thank you Colin.
Colin: Mark, how do you see this? Is this something that is a permanent change?
Mark: I would say it is probably more cyclical or more temporary. Really, much of the growth that you see in Africa is driven by this intense demand from outside markets to acquire the natural resources that are found in Africa. So, notably you can look to the Chinese but there are other markets that are also quickly and swiftly acquiring these resources. The resources we are talking about are oil and gas, we are talking about copper, gold, timber, even agricultural products.
Colin: China has done more than just plunder resources, if I could put it that way, hasn’t it? It has invested an awful lot of money in infrastructure in Africa. I believe it is something like $19 billion dollars in aide and President Hu has actually been to that continent three times, which is probably more times than he has been anywhere else.
Mark: China does have a very great aggressive policy toward engaging Africa, and within a broader foreign policy environment, so to speak. It’s engagement, again in the African context, is at the end of the day to ensure undisputed access to natural resources in Africa. But, to really facilitate that and to minimize any blowback, whether from local political concerns or security elements, China has to develop a multifaceted approach. So then it gets into infrastructure development, political assistance, donor assistance — even providing security assistance to regimes in Africa, all in a way to ensure that China can acquire the resources it needs for domestic requirements.
Colin: Two points there. Is it preserving regimes that otherwise might not be preserved? And are the ordinary Africans benefiting from this?
Mark: To your first question, I don’t believe that that China has any hard and fast relations to preserve existing regimes. China will throw a regime under the bus as quickly as any other foreign government will. China is quick to ensure that it has good relations with the government in power but it will develop relations quickly with opposition parties if it would appear that an opposition party has a chance to move into power.
Colin: Now, another issue is world food supply. The United Nations and various other world agencies all see Africa as a potential food basket for much of the rest of the world, which is short of food. But then of course there are African countries short of food. But somehow or other this doesn’t seem to happen. What is stopping it from happening?
Mark: Conceptually, Africa is seen as this vast, undeveloped geography that can be very conducive to large-scale — industrial scale — agriculture development. There have been countries in the past to have been breadbaskets for regions of Africa. A case in point with Zimbabwe that used to be the agricultural breadbasket for Southern Africa. Now this is the external concept that Africa could become a great breadbasket for the rest of the world. On the other hand you have some tremendous political pressures in Africa that are really impediments to achieving that vision. You have demands over land and demands over food production from indigenous Africans and local governments that can compete with this external vision for producing large-scale food that can that can feed other regions of the world. This is a recipe for conflict. If you introduce this external view of what Africa can be in terms of a global food basket without recognizing the constraints and potential blowback within African countries over identity, over concepts of land, land usage and land ownership, and even in countries is that are food insecure, if you all of a sudden generate large-scale food production but then ship that food that is farmed for external market and deny a local population access to food that otherwise could feed a hungry population, that is a recipe for conflict.
Colin: Now, you travel through Africa all the time. As you look at this continent, which are the very bright spots and which are the ones where there is real trouble and where it is quite dangerous to go?
Mark: I would say Angola on the one hand is an extremely interesting country that is slowly but steadily emerging from a period of long civil war. The civil war that ended in 2002. But even the legacy of that continued forward for several years. It is only now that the country is starting to develop its land-based economy as opposed to the offshore oil that propped up the Angolan economy during its postcolonial experience. A couple of other countries that we closely monitor: one is Nigeria, a country that went through national elections in April of this year but has really found itself in a quandary of sectarian violence. There’s been an interesting shift in the location of violence from the Niger Delta, the oil-producing region that saw tremendous militant violence over the last several years. Now the Niger Delta is calm and quiet on the one hand because one of their own is now president — Goodluck Jonathan. But the violence has shifted now to the north, perhaps to the have-nots, perhaps as a result of grievances that the president is not one of their own. Nigeria is a country we have to closely watch. Another country we are paying attention to is South Africa. It is a little over a year away from a leadership convention within the ruling African National Congress, or ANC, and we’re just paying attention to succession challenges within that government and the way forward for the ANC.
Colin: President Zuma is likely to be reelected, isn’t he?
Mark: At this point in time President Zuma has a clear advantage over his rivals within the ANC.
Colin: Well Mark, thank you very much. Mark Schroeder there, and you can of
course read Mark’s detailed analysis on
www.Stratfor.com<http://www.stratfor.com/>.
That’s Agenda for this week. Thank you so much for joining us. I’m Colin
Chapman. Goodbye for now
Read more: Agenda: The Prospects of Sub Saharan Africa | STRATFOR<http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20111118-agenda-prospects-sub-saharan-africa#ixzz1eXM8pxyE>
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