Kigali - As a pendulum swings, so the global narrative about Africa changes wildly, memorably represented by the covers of the Economist magazine - “The Hopeless Continent” in 2000 and “Africa Rising” in 2011.
At the World Economic Forum Africa meetings in the Rwandan capital, which close on Friday, it has been striking how “Africa is not a country” has been replaced by “Africa should be one market”.
East Africa has frequently been held up as a good example of regional integration. The East African Community has been pointed to as a case to emulate, evidenced by examples of how small changes, such as removing mobile roaming fees for residents travelling in the region, have had big positive outcomes.
As Arancha Gonzalez Laya, the executive director of the International Trade Centre, told a session on Thursday evening titled Realising Africa As One Market, the region has experienced an explosion of voice and data traffic since the charges were dropped.
More than 1 200 participants from at least 70 countries are taking part in the WEF on Africa, being held under the theme “Connecting Africa’s Resources Through Digital Transformation”.
It has been noted more than once, especially by younger delegates, that the Fourth Industrial Revolution, makes some level of integration inevitable, since trying to make national borders apply in a fully wired world is a bit like having a smoking section in an enclosed room. Still, the barriers exist in a continent where more people are not digitally connected than those who are.
Proponents have waxed lyrical about potential benefits, from self-sufficiency to the bargaining power of a combined market of more than a billion people.
Removing barriers to trade, lifting tariffs, enabling the free movement of people and goods between countries have been mooted as tools to dramatically improve the economy of the region. The potential to scale businesses and innovations within the whole of Africa has been mentioned over and over again.
But Siyabonga Gama, chief executive officer of South Africa’s Transnet, told the panel that one could dust off any number of studies on the topic, but little had been achieved.
“Ideas are not in short supply; what is in short supply is a bias for action,” he said.
Liu Guijin, special representative of the Chinese government on African affairs, and Tarek Sultan Al Essa, chief executive officer and vice-chairman of Agility, both emphasised the size of the opportunity and repeated the call for less talk, more action.
Sultan Al Essa said the opportunities presented by an Africa-wide free trade area were tremendous, adding that what he would like to see was “an electronic superhighway for trade facilitation in Africa”.
The mood of the panel was summed up by Michael Froman, the US trade representative, when he referred to the classic quote credited to American inventor Thomas Edison: “Vision without action is hallucination.”
ANA