My Beauty Best Teacher

Nicholas Kristof's Africa, Andrea Bohnstedt writes in the Star

Kristof tells a story of ‘Africa’ firmly through the lense of a humanitarian NGO fundraiser – there is little notion of a continent turning itself around in this succession of people whose condition improves from wretchedness to bare survival thanks to Western-funded charities. He could have come to Kenya: there’s a good bit of wretchedness here, too, what with the famine in the Horn, and Kibera is a tried and tested (in fact, internationally famous) showcase for urban poverty. But Kristof and his travel mates could have also met up with Martin Oduor Otieno to hear a bit more about KCB’s regional expansion, with Airtel’s team to hear about their pan-African plans, with Vimal Shah to learn about a regional agricultural and agroprocessing firm. Maybe visited the NSE? Chatted to Stella Kilonzo about regional capital market integration, or asked Suzanne Kilolo Kedenge about digital investor relations management, or perhaps listened to Isis Nyong’o talk about mobile advertising? Kenya has some kickingly capable women and no, they don’t all excel at grinding millet. As it stands, the article is one neatly executed piece of pan-continental character assassination.

Sanou Mbaye writing in Project Syndicate:

He speaks on the need to liberalize the remittance channels:

The effects of banks’ hijacking of national payment systems to service only the modern economy are compounded by the exclusive agreements that banks and money-transfer companies such as Western Union have signed with most African countries. These agreements lock out non-banking entities from the highly lucrative market for migrant remittances from the African diaspora, which remain a key engine of growth

African states must now recognize that modernizing their informal sectors by integrating them into the modern economy can be a major development tool. Yet only a few countries have started moving in that direction. Nigeria has refrained from signing any exclusive agreements with Western Union and others, and its newly consolidated banking industry is making significant inroads across the region...

Giving micro-finance institutions access to national and regional payments systems and electronic retail facilities will go a long way toward meeting the requirements of the retail and business sector in terms of banking facilities. It will also help facilitate access by the poorest to financial services, thus helping to reduce the high proportion of the un-banked population.

All of this will invariably spur development and integration of national financial systems and intra-regional trade. This will be a welcome development, because a large proportion of intra-regional trade is carried out by informal operators and small and medium enterprises that do not have access to the banking system. Moreover, economic integration and increased intra-regional trade are the best entry point into global markets for all countries.

Obiageli Ezekwesili writes:

Today, there is strong consensus among African leaders that regional integration is indispensable to unlock economies of scale and sharpen competitiveness. And promoting intra-African trade has emerged as a top priority, in recognition that the African market of one billion consumers can be a powerful engine for growth and employment.
Yet despite the introduction of free trade areas, customs unions, and common markets within the Region, the level of intra-African trade remains among the lowest in the world -- only about 10% of African trade is within the continent, compared to about 40% in North America and about 60% in Western Europe.

This is Africa reporting on efforts to bolster regional integration. A bugbear if there ever was one:

Africa accounts for just 3 percent of world trade today, and just 12 percent of that is internal. Underdeveloped transport and power infrastructure, as well as cumbersome regulatory environments and corruption also make it the world’s most expensive business environment. Dominated by fragmented and small economies, the continent lags well behind the likes of Asia, Europe and North America in terms of competitiveness – and as a consequence – struggles to attract large scale private investment outside of the extractive minerals and oil and gas industries.Addressing these challenges will invariably focus attention on Africa’s regional economic communities. While each geographical part of the continent has its own REC, one has quickly emerged as a model for integration; the East African Community. Having broken up in 1977, the EAC was re-established in 1999, and has since then taken significant strides towards building an effective economic and political framework for integration across its five member states – Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and Rwanda.

Yao Graham of the Third World Network writes in Pambazuka:

...in the face of the global crisis many African governments are looking only outwards towards their ‘development partners’ rather than exploring the opportunities for deepening regional and continental cooperation and integration. The IMF is offering its pernicious advice that not much needs to change and there seem to be many in African leadership ready to listen. Meantime in the global North, pages are being torn from the rulebooks by which African economies have been run from Washington...[continue reading]

Hinsley Njila founder of Real Focus writes about the deleterious effects of the CFA franc and echoes calls for Francophone countries to free themselves from its yoke:

For every growth in France’s GDP, the euro appreciates against the Dollar, thus the CFA franc assumes too high an exchange rate. This puts the brakes on growth in the African economies that are also heavily dependent on commodities produced by Asia and South American countries that have much more flexible currencies. Put simply, a strong euro just kills CFA member economies as they experience declining export prices...A high fixed rate also kills economic growth in member countries, as it’s incompatible with productivity. The level of regional integration among member countries and the two central banks is remarkably low, even further undermining economic growth. Because the economies of Central African countries are heavily dependent on oil, and those of West Africa heavily dependent on other commodities, it is hard to argue for the long-term viability of the CFA unless of course you’re De Gaulle.

G. Pascal Zachary writes :

The problem of course is that Congo, as a political entity, is an illusion. The country is too large, diverse and riven by durable differences to be managed from a single center. It is time to explore a truly federalized Congo that might over the next 10 to 20 years peacefully “devolve” into a several nation-states. Eastern Congo would be especially well-served by “devolution,” since the region – today the least stable in the current Congo – has natural economic, social and geographic links to neighboring Uganda and Rwanda. If Scotland can engage in a process of “devolution” from Britain, why cannot eastern Congo engage in the same process? Colonial maps cannot forever burden the serious and expensive efforts to develop regional integration, whether in East Africa or the sub-Saharan generally. The double-standard – whereby European countries can split themselves apart based on democratic processes but African countries are eternally bound by the borders of their former European masters — ought to end. That European governments often quickly oppose any talk of redrawing African are examples of both hypocrisy and stupidity. European governments spend billions of dollars holding together unwieldy African countries and in the end sustain only the fiction of real sovereignty. The Congo is perhaps the best example of this. Congolese elections, which cost European donors a hefty sum, accomplished the little more than to highlight the folly of holding this vast territory together under a single political rubric. Maintaining the fiction of the Congo, in short, is dangerous and ultimately futile.

Kavaljit Singh writes:

To a large extent, the expansion of South-South and South-North investment flows reflects the increasing integration of developing countries into the world economy. A number of important factors including regional integration through trade and investment agreements, trade and financial liberalisation, increasing wealth as well as limited market size and resource base at home have encouraged Southern TNCs to invest abroad.

Gumisai Mutume writes:

African countries are grappling to undo a legacy dominated by trade with their former colonial rulers rather than with each other. Senegal's biggest trading partner is France, while Gambia trades extensively with the UK. Although Senegal surrounds Gambia, trade between the two neighbours is minimal...A major critique of current regional integration efforts in Africa is that their design and objectives are driven by a preference for formal rather than informal trade. Ms. Mkhonza (Former assistant secretary-general,ACP ) views the sector as an effective means of integration from below, as small-scale trade is often conducted and driven by the needs of indigenous traders rather than governments or international agencies."There is a real economic integration going on at the informal level," concurs the non-governmental InterAfrica Group (IAG). For many years it has been recognized that many countries' real economies "have been mostly informal and much larger, more dynamic and more regionally integrated than their official economies."

Ethan Zuckerman writes:

For Africa to succeed economically, Birdsall(director of the Center for Development Economics) suggests, nations need to trade with each other more, creating larger, more attractive markets and reaping economies of scale. It makes very little sense for each state in Africa to build their own garment industry… and even less sense for each country to protect their industry against their neighbors with tariff barriers - if trade between countries was easier and cheaper, nations could specialize in sectors of the economy, begin trading to neighboring states, then grow and trade with the wider world. But at present, Sub-Saharan African nations levy tariffs on average of 17% on trade with each other; OECD nations have dropped these tariffs to an average of under 4%.