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02/22/2007
Africa, Part I
I had a lot of time in the air the past ten days as I traveled to
Morocco, and along the way I picked up a publication titled The
Africa Report / 2007. Following are some tidbits.
--Water and climate change in Africa.
The threat to the continent from climate change is greater than
ever.
“Factors such as poverty, conflict, disease, governance problems,
an unjust international trading system and the burden of
unpayable debt hinder the ability of communities and nations to
handle the shocks.
“Climate change poses a threat both to human development and
to the Earth’s ecosystems upon which all life depends. This
double jeopardy is a fundamental challenge. In Africa, these
natural systems form the foundation of most countries’
economies from which the majority of the population derives
their livelihoods. Africa contains about one-fifth of all known
species of plants, mammals and birds, as well as one-sixth of
amphibians and reptiles. Biodiversity in Africa, which
principally occurs outside formally conserved areas, is under
threat from climate change and other stresses .
“Based on one of the International Panel on Climate Change’s
moderate scenarios for future global temperature rise, the
center’s climate model projects that .extreme drought
conditions are set to prevail over some 8% of the land surface by
2020, and then to accelerate until extreme drought effects no less
than 30% of the globe by 2090. Historically a total of 20% of the
Earth’s land surface has been prone to drought at any one time,
be it extreme, severe or moderate. This has now risen to 28%
and is predicted to reach 35% by 2020 and to an alarming 50% -
half the Earth’s land surface and still rising – by 2090. Droughts
will also be much longer in duration.” [This will most effect the
grain-growing areas of Europe, North America, and Russia, as
well as parts of the Middle East, Africa and Brazil.]
[Source: Andrew Simms / The Africa Report]
--On Lagos, Nigeria.
I found the following description by George Packer a bit
harrowing.
“The sign on the highway outside Murtala Muhammed
International Airport does not proclaim, ‘Welcome to Lagos.’ It
says, ‘This Is Lagos’ – an ominous statement of fact. Olisa
Izeobi, a sawmill worker, said, ‘We understand this as ‘Nobody
will care for you, and you have to struggle to survive.’’ It is the
singular truth awaiting the 600,000 people who pour into Lagos
from around West Africa every year. Their lungs will burn with
smoke and exhaust; their eyes will sting; their skin will turn
charcoal gray. And hardly any of them will ever leave .
“In 1950, fewer than 300,000 people lived in Lagos. In the
second half of the 20th century, the city grew at a rate of close to
7% annually. It is currently the sixth-largest city in the world,
and it is growing faster than any of the world’s other megacities
By 2015, Lagos will rank third, behind Tokyo and Bombay,
with 23 million inhabitants .
“As a picture of the urban future, Lagos is fascinating only if you
are able to leave it .Traffic pileups lead to ‘improvised
conditions’ because there is no other way for most people in
Lagos to scratch out a living than to sell on the street. It would
be preferable to have some respite from buying and selling, some
separation between private and public life. It would be
preferable not to have five-hour ‘go-slows’ – traffic jams – that
force many workers to get up well before dawn and spend almost
no waking hours at home. And it would be preferable not to
have an economy in which millions of people work furiously
with almost no hope of advancement.”
One newspaper editor in Nigeria told George Packer, however,
that while you and I would wonder why so many continue to
come to Nigeria, “They never believe there’s no chance” of
getting ahead.
“(The) largest market in Lagos (is) Mile 12, on the highway
heading north out of town, where foodstuff coming into the city
is bought and sold wholesale. It is a muddy area – most of Lagos
is reclaimed swampland – and workers with buckets of water
earn seven cents washing the feet of market women. ‘That is the
kind of entrepreneurship that keeps a lot of people in Lagos,’
(said editor Paul Okunlola). ‘If you took that to my home town,
who would wash feet – and who would pay money for it,
anyway? That is what drives Lagos.’”
And so
“What looks like anarchic activity in Lagos is actually governed
by a set of informal but ironclad rules. Although the vast
majority of people in the city are smalltime entrepreneurs, almost
no one works for himself. Everyone occupies a place in an
economic hierarchy and owes fealty, as well as cash, to the
person above him – known as an oga, or master – who in turn
provides help or protection. Every group of workers, even at the
stolen-goods market in the Ijora district, has a union that amounts
to an extortion racket. The teenager hawking sunglasses in
traffic receives the merchandise from a wholesaler, to whom he
turns over 90% of his earnings; if he tries to cheat or cut out, his
guarantor – an authority figure such as a relative or a man from
his home town, known to the vendor and the wholesaler alike –
has to make up the loss, then hunt down his wayward charge.
The patronage system helps the megacity absorb the continual
influx of newcomers for whom the formal economy has no use.
Wealth accrues not to the most imaginative or industrious, but to
those who rise up through the chain of patronage. It amounts to
a predatory system of obligation, set down in no laws, enforced
by implied threat.”
Bottom line, if Lagos grows to 23 million, then as a local
government chairman told reporter George Packer it would not
be a city of the urban poor, but rather one of the new urban
destitute. “We’re sitting on a powder keg here. If we don’t
address this question of economic growth, and I mean
vigorously, there is no doubt as to what’s going to happen here
eventually. It’s just going to boil over,” said the official. “And
guess what? If all this fails, the world will feel the weight of
Lagos not working out.”
[The above was excerpted from a piece in The New Yorker, that
in turn The Africa Report published.]
--China and Africa
Business with sub-Saharan Africa:
1995 $2.5 billion in Chinese exports to Africa
2000 $5.0 billion
2004 $13.8 billion
2006 $22.0 billion (est.)
At the same time, Chinese imports from Africa over the same
period, 1995-2006, have risen from $1.4 billion to an estimated
$30 billion. Of course China’s imports are almost solely natural
resource related, including China’s new key oil supplier in
Africa, Angola.
But while some like Zimbabwe and Sudan are actively seeking
political support from Beijing (Sudan also being a big exporter of
oil to China), others aren’t so sure about the growing inter-
relationships, while China certainly isn’t cooperating with the
U.S. and the U.N. when it comes to issues such as Sudan.
--Africa and Energy
2005 production of oil (thousand barrels/day)
Nigeria 2.58 million
Algeria 2.02
Libya ...1.70
Angola 1.24
[Source BP, Energy Information Administration]
The total for Africa in 2005 was 9.835 million out of a
worldwide production figure of 81.088. Today, global
production is about 85 million barrels per day, with the biggest
commensurate increase among the four above probably being for
Angola. [This is more from intuition than factual data, I admit.]
---
I’ll have a few more individual country tidbits next time
March 1.
Brian Trumbore
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