This week, I would like to discuss an area of the world that I believe all Americans should know more about: sub-Saharan Africa. From personal experience, I rarely ever hear anything from the media regarding sub-Saharan Africa outside of stories of disease, ethnic conflict and poverty. Although there is truth to these stereotypes, there are so many more angles to consider when considering the complete picture of sub-Saharan Africa. One of these angles is sub-Saharan Africa’s economic potential. In this column, I intend to explore from an economic perspective why I believe Americans should pay more attention to sub-Saharan Africa.
For its rapid economic growth, sub-Saharan Africa has begun to garner serious attention from countries all over the world. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Africa, as a whole, is currently the continent with the fastest economic growth, not Asia, as many might expect. According to the IMF, the overall sub-Saharan African economy grew by roughly 6 percent per year in the last decade, with similar growth expected to continue in the short term. This macroeconomic growth indicates longer-term improvements in the quality of life experienced by citizens across many sub-Saharan African countries; the African Development Bank projects that consumer spending throughout sub-Saharan Africa will explode from $680 billion in 2008 to $2.2 trillion in 2030. Some American companies have noticed the potential for the expansion of new markets in sub-Saharan Africa. For example, Howard French of The Atlantic notes that Wal-Mart has recently become majority owner of Massmart, a large retailer throughout southern Africa. He notes that another example is ACS, an American data processing company, which has created over 1,800 jobs in Ghana.
Unfortunately, however, American efforts to recognize sub-Saharan Africa’s economic growth have lagged behind those of China in recent years. For example, Chris Alden, author of “China in Africa,” notes that China’s trade with the African continent totaled under $10 billion in 2000. However, by 2010, China surpassed the United States as Africa’s largest trading partner, reaching $127 billion. A large section of China’s booming trade with sub-Saharan Africa has emerged from growing Chinese access to sub-Saharan Africa’s diverse array of natural resources, including oil.
Gerald Lemelle of the think-tank Foreign Policy in Focus outlines Africa’s resource wealth in the following quote: “Africa produces 90 percent of the world’s cobalt; 64 percent of its manganese; 50 percent of gold; 40 percent of platinum; 30 percent of uranium; 20 percent of total petroleum; 70 percent of cocoa; 60 percent of coffee; over 80 percent of coltan and 50 percent of palm oil.” China has utilized these resources to facilitate its own rapid growth. For example, China has used oil from Angola to reduce its dependence on Middle Eastern oil and has used coal from South Africa to facilitate its rapid construction of power plants.
It is now the job of U.S. government officials, corporations and even individual citizens to reconsider their conception of sub-Saharan Africa. Although the media stereotypes of sub-Saharan Africa as a place plagued by disease and poverty have a grain of truth, there is so much more to sub-Saharan Africa than meets the eye. Sub-Saharan Africa has a growing middle class that is a receptive market for American goods, and it also holds a diverse array of natural resources that could benefit the United States in the future. These only scratch the surface of the benefits the United States could gain from deepening its relationship with a region that is slated to become the most populous in the world by the end of the century.
Vinod Kannuthurai is a senior public policy leadership major from Hazlehurst.
