Africa: The Awakening of a Giant

Spanish Translation of the Week

In the past decade, Africa has gone from being considered a continent completely ruined to one characterized by unprecedented growth. At the end of the last millennium, Africa was regarded as a lost continent; torn apart by conflict, famine and pervasive poverty.

En una década África ha pasado de ser considerada un continente completamente arruinado a experimentar un crecimiento sin precedentes.  Al final del pasado milenio, África era considerada en los medios como un continente perdido, desgarrado, eternamente desangrado por los conflictos tribales, el hambre y la pobreza omnipresente.

This article has been translated from Spanish. Click here to read the original version on Actualidad.

Today, Africa is seen in a different light, and many predict the revival of the 'Black Continent." Africa has incalculable natural resources, boasting 40% of global raw materials and 60% of arable land. Both markets are rapidly growing, and Africa has a highly motivated population.

No continent has experienced the rapid growth that Africa has in the last decades, between 5 % and 10%. In the oil countries, rates far exceeded these figures. Angola has a growth rate of 22.6 % in 2007.

While opportunities are worse in Europe and U.S. due to the financial crisis and the austerity measures, investors and speculators are discovering the African continent. New players like India, Brazil, Turkey and of course, China, are turning to Africa. Last year the Sino-African trade reached almost 200,000 million dollars. Through such partnerships, new highways, railways, airports, dams, power plants, pipelines, factories and cities such as Lagos, Nairobi and Addis Ababa are being built. Africa is experiencing the emergence of industrial parks and special economic zones.

Achievements of recent years

Economists attribute the economic advances to three main factors: political stability, economic reforms in many countries and interest an in technological innovation that has invaded the continent. After the Cold War, only three of the 53 African nations were at least nominally functioning democracies, currently they are 25. Apart from areas of chronic conflict -Congo, Sudan and Somalia, mainly -the amount of civil wars and coups has decreased, as have the levels of violence.

Africa has also 'plugged in' to the world of the Internet, and the number of users has reached 650 million. "As Africa is modernizing, is able to skip the industrial era, entering directly into a digital future," say experts quoted by the German weekly Der Spiegel. Free access to information stimulates economic activity, strengthens civil society and brings social change, especially in big cities.

Behind the progress is a growing middle class, which the African Development Bank estimates to be at over 310 million people. After decades of decline, African nations stand to benefit from the same demographic divides that enabled countries like South Korea to progress. By 2050, Africa will have a population of at least 2,000 million and a quarter of the global workforce.

However, skeptics warn that national problems facing many countries - governmental shortcomings, mismanagement, nepotism, rampant corruption and capital flight - can quickly undermine the advances of recent years.

Article translated by Natalia Diaz, Staff Intern for the Mexico Institute at the Wilson Center.

Photo attributed to Bioversity International via Flickr Commons.