Is Africa really rising?

Most commentators on Africa hedge their bets and warn that many things could go wrong with the African development path. Also that there is still much to be done in terms of uprooting corruption and making tax collection more efficient and the spending of the taxes more effective. However the broader picture would suggest continuing growth and development. 'Last, but not least' might sum up the prospects. The developed economies appear to be running out of some steam at the very moment when Africa is getting up a good head of it.

Of course Western economic weakness is not good for African business, but the fixation with economic growth can blind us to the fact that a no-growth European or Japanese economy is still a huge producer and consumer, and therefore still requires very considerable quantities of commodities. And even in no or low-growth times there can be windfalls. When the Japanese shut down their nuclear power stations after Fukushima blew, exports of South African coal for their coal-fired power stations, shot up dramatically.

Lack of growth creates such panic among First World economists, politicians and journalists that one would imagine that Greece was about to go the way of Somalia. But if they were to listen calmly to some of the alternative or 'transitional' economic thinkers they might be able to grasp the simple fact that nothing grows forever and that, as even Adam Smith predicted, eventually the global economy has to come to some kind of an economic equilibrium in which there will be growth in the quality (cleanliness, greenness, efficiency) of what is produced rather than in the sheer brute quantity of it. The developed world looks as if it is heading into those uncharted economic waters, while the developing world continues on a more classic trajectory for the time being.

So, yes, Africa is rising and will continue to rise. It's our turn now, so while the so-called advanced economies slow down, even retreat a bit and find – albeit painfully – their zero-growth equilibrium, Africa will for the foreseeable future, continue to inherit a more dynamic growth path similar to that enjoyed by the West and Asia since the Second World War. Why not?