Africa’s success: evaluating accomplishments

This paper evaluates the seven presumed African success stories: Botswana, South Africa, Zambia, Ghana, Tanzania, Mozambique and Uganda. It gives a detailed analysis of the economic, political, governance and human development scenarios in each country, and identifies the emerging challenges. Although all the seven countries are growing rapidly, they face, among others, the following problems:

• job creation lags behind promises and expectations
• acute shortage of electricity hinders exploitation of newly found resources
• road and rail infrastructure remains inadequate in all expect South Africa and Botswana
• growing indigenous wealth is accompanied by severe income inequalities
• high incidence of tuberculosis, malaria and HIV/AIDS
• high levels of corruption

Chinese influence is growing in the region, mainly in Mozambique and Ghana. Chinese investors are contributing significantly to the growth but colonial methods of Chinese operations characterised by extraction and exploitation have led to serious protests in some areas. Inexpensive Chinese imports are affecting the domestic market.

Overall, the paper concludes that the seven African examples are successes only compared to the rest of Africa, where good governance is rare, corruption common and poverty endemic. On the economic front, these countries continue to depend on primary exports and none has entered a steady state of sustainability. Leadership problems are threatening the long-term sustainability of the gains made in governance.