Arne's Observations

Arne Doornebal is a Dutch freelance journalist working out of Kampala, Uganda. For Club Africa he shares his experiences living and working as a journalist in Africa

2012 Promises to become another interesting year for Africa

5 Percent up – again

It doesn’t happen often, but 2011 was so packed with newsworthy developments that a lot of media corporations had used up most of their budgets before the year was even half way. Some fellow correspondents, at least the ones who are lucky enough to have their organizations pay for travel expenses in the first place, were told to stay home in December because the coffers were empty.

As the dust of 2011 settles we see a continent which gained South Sudan as a new country, and had the regimes of a record five countries change drastically. Tunisia, Egypt, Cote d’Ivoire, Zambia and Libya are now all ruled by new people. But what didn’t change, was the general upbeat economy.

Rosy predictions

As the time for looking forward has come, most analysts shower Africa with positive reflections. “Africa’s economic managers can claim some credit for a decade of annual growth of more than 5 %” writes Patrick Smith, editor-in-chief of The Africa Report. Smith also runs Africa Confidential, which is like a Bible (or Quran) for anyone interested in in-depth Africa coverage.

I didn’t face a travel ban in December. In fact I made a 1,000 km road trip through Uganda, pretty much all of it on smooth tarred roads. That wouldn’t be possible a decade ago! I went to visit the historic Kilembe copper mine on the Congolese border.

What an amazing place! The mine was abandoned in 1978 when the managers fled Idi Amin’s regime. But the 4.5 kilometres of tunnels inside the mountain, the lifts and the railways were still there, rusting away. It won’t take long, managers there assured me, before foreign investors will come and take over the place, ready to dig up millions of tonnes of valuable copper ore.

Highest growth in the world?

Kilembe’s revival will start soon, and could be a symbol for economic revival in Uganda and the region. In the ‘East-African,’ one of the best business papers on the continent, two entrepreneurs even argued that Uganda might have ‘the highest growth potential in the world.’ Startled by this fact, I called up the author, the Dutch/Greek Dimitri Stoelinga who runs a consultancy firm in Rwanda.

“Given their GDP per capita, countries in East Africa have a comparatively high level of diversity in the products they make” Dimitri explained. “We can compare the situation here with that in Taiwan or China 25 years ago. It is to a large extent this diversity in Taiwan and China’s production structures that led to the strong growth in their manufacturing sectors. This is also possible in East Africa, a change that would lead to job creation and bring many people out of poverty”. The African Development Bank predicts an average GDP growth for Sub-Saharan Africa of 5.5 percent, with 5.1 for North Africa. 2012 Promises to become another interesting year for Africa.

Question: is an African country with the highest growth in the world realistic?

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