Europe’s relationship with Africa encompasses significant grim history. Yet the continent is more central to how Europe’s future will look than ever. Meanwhile, China’s remarkably constructive relationship with Africa today presents a potential primary mode for substantially enhancing Africa’s prospects. This geopolitical fact also represents a crucial opportunity for Europe to partner with China and confidently shape its own future. Provided, that is, Europe hasn’t, influenced by the US, crushed its capacity to act in its own best interest. Richard Cullen reports.
“GEOGRAPHY IS DESTINY” is a quotation regularly attributed to Napoleon. It is commonly taken to mean that states cannot choose their own location: they must work out how to best live with their neighbours. In Napoleon’s case, some neighbours reasoned that geographic proximity may also put you on his invasion list.
In the case of the Europe, including the UK, proximity to Africa is an unquestionable geographic fact. And here are some more facts.
In 1960, the total population of Europe (West of the Ural Mountains) was 605 million which was more than double the total population of Africa at that time (284 million). Africa today, however, has a population of over 1.5 billion. This is already double the present total population of Europe (743 million) and almost three times the current population of the EU and the UK combined (520 million).
TEN TIMES THE POPULATION OF EUROPE
Within 25 years it is estimated that the population of Africa will be 2.5 billion and over 4 billion by 2100. This is about 10 times the size of the estimated EU population in 2100. And according to an Outreach International report from September 2023:
Africa has the highest extreme poverty rate globally with 23 of the world’s 28 poorest countries, which have extreme poverty rates above 30%. Using the poverty line of $1.90 per day, Africa’s extreme poverty rate was recently estimated to be about 35.5%. This rate is 6.8 times higher than the average for the rest of the world (see: https://outreach-international.org/blog/poverty-in-africa/).
Unsurprisingly, Europe has experienced substantial irregular and illegal migration from Africa over an extended period. Millions in Africa, where youth unemployment rates are staggeringly high, want to escape poverty and they are willing to risk much in this quest.
‘CAPITALIST REVOLUTION NEEDED’
These facts are widely recognized and discussed. But, given those comparative population growth figures, Europe’s Africa-related challenges are set in increase conspicuously while there is scant evidence of intensive long-term planning by the EU to address this effectively.
Still, some are turning their minds to this matter. A flagship media champion of Western free market solutions, The Economist, recently argued, with customary vigour, that what Africa needed was a “capitalist revolution” (paywall).
This perspective stresses how spirited capitalism can best allocate resources to lift economic performance.
Let’s consider, though, Africa’s first central encounter with modern Euro-American capitalism: the slave trade. According to Statista almost 11 million Africans were captured and very profitably sold to the Americas during the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, between 1514 and 1866 (see this link). A first-rate dynamic success for the slave traders.
Many far less grim capitalist ventures have unfolded in Africa since but see the poverty figures above for one distinctive measure of how effective, over time, these commercial initiatives have proved to be. Recognizing this, The Economist does qualify its enthusiastic advice by noting that capitalism may presently be Africa’s “least fashionable idea”, before pressing on with its advocacy.
POLITICALLY UNTHINKABLE
What remains politically unthinkable for The Economist and a great number of like-minded Europeans is that the EU should do all it can to engage actively with Beijing as China expands it Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) across Africa. Yet, this is exactly what the leading Singaporean commentator, Kishore Mahbubani, advocated in an important article in 2021, entitled, “Europe’s Dilemma: Head or Heart?” (see link).
Mahbubani essentially argues that, unless it works in partnership with China, it is most difficult to see how Europe can foster the sort of long-term, stabilizing economic growth Africa needs, so that Africans will come to see how their best future lies in Africa.
WHAT CHINA HAS SHOWN
Consider the exceptional China growth story.
What China has shown, above all, is that ultimately, the greatest resource any nation possesses its own educated population. Or, to put it another way, you can never teach a drum of oil how to create a better future for itself – unlike school-age children who are immensely eager to learn such lessons.
Even during the turbulent rule of Mao Zedong, before the “open door” era commenced over 40 years ago, China saw a huge lift in mass literacy from a low of 20% in 1949. By 2022 the literacy level was 97%, according to China’s Ministry of Education. Incidentally, the US Census Bureau confirmed that mass literacy in America had fallen from 90% in 1950 to 79% in 2022.
Once mass literacy replaces endemic illiteracy, the scope for effective further education is a massively amplified. China has proved this on a scale never seen before in human history. With its 1.4 billion vastly better educated population, China now leads or equals the world across a host of areas.
Thus, The Economist recently confirmed that China is now a “scientific superpower”, while the Guardian argued in March, 2023 that, “China is leading the US in the technology race in all but a few fields”. Moreover, China’s domination of global manufacturing includes: ship-building, vehicles, batteries, solar panels, green-technology generally, the widest range of household and recreational items plus medical necessities. And its building of all forms of transport and information infrastructure now eclipses comparable work currently being done across the entire Global West, while it continues to forge ahead in space exploration (see link).
This is the can-do-prowess that underpins the prominent global achievements of the trillion-dollar BRI. It is true that the BRI has not all been plain sailing, but it is still far ahead, in terms of achievements, compared to its pallid Western imitators according to a recent report from Griffith University in Australia (link here).
Better still, BRI projects and Chinese investments in Africa have already transformed basic telecommunications, while continual progress has been made in enhancing transport, shipping, education and medical infrastructure. The tasks faced are huge in number and complexity, of course, but Chinese project teams arrive equipped with unparalleled, relevant direct experience.
OUTSTANDING RESOURCE
Meanwhile, China understands better than anyone why that burgeoning African population is not simply a huge poverty-problem but also an outstanding potential resource. In a recent interview, Professor Wang Yiwei, from Renmin University in Beijing lucidly observed how he saw a not too distant future where far more could be: “made in Africa, with China, for the world” (see this link).
China also keenly understands how an economically advancing, globally trading Africa is very good for Africa, above all – but also very good for China and the world.
In 2021, Professor Mahbubani spelled out with customary cogency what Europe should do and why:
If Europe wants to preserve its own long-term interests, it should make the development of Africa, in partnership with China, an immediate priority. The country that attracts the largest number of African leaders to summit meetings is China. The most sensible thing for European leaders to do is to join, en masse, the next high-level meeting of Chinese and African leaders in Beijing. A massive turnout of European leaders at such a summit would send a powerful market signal. It could catalyze a powerful wave of new investment in Africa. Over time, with a strong African economy, there will be less incentive for widespread African migration to Europe. There is only one obstacle to Europe doing this sensible thing: America will object.
Four years later, this argument remains even more convincing. And beyond its massive military bullying power, America’s present standing to object is sub-zero. Washington’s abject performance since 2021, now set to be amplified by the inauguration of the second Trump administration, confirms this. Yet one is still aptly left to wonder today if Europe, pressured by Washington, has perversely crushed its capacity to act in Europe’s own best interests (link here).
Richard Cullen is an adjunct law professor at the University of Hong Kong and a popular writer on current affairs.
To see a list of articles he has written for this outlet, click this phrase.
Image at the top by fridayeveryday.