There have been a lot of thoughts, discussions, and observations regarding the ‘Africa Rising’ narrative. Some people argue that Africa as a continent is rising, others say that it is not rising, or that it is not growing collectively. I do not aim at finding who is wrong or right, however, I aim at demonstrating that this entire narrative is an irrelevant conclusion to the collective African community, and dangerous to the real growth of African countries. If you look at the evolution of time and consider all the labels that have been attributed to Africa over time, it is inevitable to not question the motives behind such a narrative; so, before we even get to the point of asking ourselves if Africa is rising or not, we should question if the narrative is relevant to all African countries because at the end of the day we will be believing in something that seems like a daydream. The ‘Africa Rising’ narrative was first mentioned by The Economist, its basis was that over the past decade, six of the world’s 10 fastest growing countries were from Africa. This leads me to the whole point of this argument, how do you narrate a story of 54 countries from a perspective of just 6 countries? And if they stand as a good example, how deep was their perfection, and how deep was the research so as to come to such a conclusion? Time magazine took the first step into agreeing with the observation of the Economist by narrating a Kenyan boy photography story. Both articles were questioned by a publication called Trust Africa, which stipulated that the ‘Africa Rising’ narrative could be the same as the past labels given to Africa as a continent. For so long Africa has been labeled as the dark continent, which the African community has wisely argued against for so long, and is an ongoing battle to challenge such senseless labels. It wasn’t just that, in May 2000, The Economist labeled Africa as the hopeless continent, which raises question marks about the reason that pushed The Economist to come to a drastic change in perspective regarding Africa. The main reasons that pushed The Economist to come to the conclusion that Africa is rising, as stipulated in the publication of Africa Trust, are the growing figures of the Africa’s GDP, the increasing number of Africa’s billionaires, the growing usage of mobile phones, as well as the growing technology in mobile banking. Can these be the only indicators of Africa’s progress and development? My answer is no, because these features do not cut across Africa nor do I find them sustainable because as argued by Africa Trust, this does not warrant all the hype about Africa rising. Africans have always argued against labeling Africa as a one-dimensional narrative or Africa as a country, the gross generalization regarding Africa is something that we have always fought against. Not only that, we have always been against being defined by outsiders, if we always claim that we are not what they say we are, if we say it’s not acceptable to be called names and labelled by those who do not understand our history, then why is it so easy to totally accept whatever narrative they come up with and start working and walking towards it. As much as I would like to believe that the ‘Africa Rising’ narrative is relevant to the entire continent, I cannot ignore that it is not and that impedes the effort invested in the growth of African countries. Think about the time someone who has the potential to become an accomplished singer is told that he/she is already the singer he/she aspires to be before they are even halfway to becoming the accomplished singer, this will substantially reduce the investment in terms of time and energy that this person would have made into realising the dream of becoming an accomplished singer. This scenario is not different from what is happening to so many African countries, the narrative sounds like good music and we have decided to join in the dance without even fully understanding why we are dancing, eventually we will go off beat, some countries will find it hard to keep up and fall out of step, then we will start to wonder what happened to us without really seeing that we were dancing to the wrong rhythm. This might sound like a small analogy but it’s so reflective and so deep, I do not find it acceptable to keep putting Africa in one small cup of crystal clear water whereas it is a vast sea full of different Islands and so many unseen sea life, you can’t just venture on one Island and say you know the whole sea, there is no such thing as general conclusion regarding Africa. The ‘Africa Rising’ narrative is just an outfit that we would like to believe makes us look beautiful and powerful on the outside but it is not enough to cover up all the wounds, scars on the inside, it’s just a small scarf that hides the battles being fought from within, all of that will have to be exposed someday. As the old adage says “whatever you suppress you amplify” I am not ready to see the reality coming back at us to remind us that we were wrong and we were too fast to believe in the beautiful story told about us and we went too deep. MbabaziClemence is a second year student at the Africa Leadership Institute. The views expressed in this article are of the author.
