Not the Last Book on Africa

I’m a strategy consultant, and it’s a hazard of my profession to help clients define what they won’t do, or what they choose to leave to others. I hope the paragraphs above express what this book is. It’s worth sharing a few words on what it is not.

It is not a comprehensive look at Africa. As the title suggests, it is a look at commercial success in Africa. There continue to be war, disease, and poverty in Africa. There is also, joyfully, success in art, music, science, governance, health, and education. Others will document, celebrate, and critique these.

This is not a 360-degree profile of the participating CEOs. I thought it would be until my blessed publisher, Erika Heilman, showed me several books that purported to do that for various parts of the world. Reading them was like watching paint dry. I thanked her and restructured the book to focus on what you have in front of you now: perspectives on Africa, what works there, and why, from the people who know. Each of the leaders in this book merits a profile or biography, warts and all. If I get to write one, I’ll feel fortunate. If you write one, please let me know.

Finally, this book is not finished. We’re sharing a story that is still unfolding. Africa is a continent at the dawn of its emergence. There is every reason to believe there is more to come. Stay tuned.

CHAPTER 2

At the Dawn

At last we all speak the same language, and operate from the same assumptions.

Sam Jonah, CEO, AngloGold Ashanti (1986–2004)

Even most growth countries, they’re coming to that leveling off point. Not Africa.

Graham Mackay, CEO, SABMiller (1999–2012)

Few images convey Africa’s turnaround as powerfully as two covers of The Economist, separated by eleven years and depicted in figure 2–1.

In 2000, the editors of the Economist saw in Africa a continent in a spiral of violence and despair. As the Economist’s editors described it in their lead editorial, “Mozambique and Madagascar have been deluged by floods, famine has started to reappear in Ethiopia, Zimbabwe has succumbed to government-sponsored thuggery, and poverty and pestilence continue unabated. Most seriously, wars still rage from north to south and east to west.” It was a damning safari of sorrow, one that ended fatalistically. “Brutality, despotism and corruption exist everywhere, ” the Economist reported, “but African societies, for reasons buried in their cultures, seem especially susceptible to them.”¹

Figure 2–1: The Economist on Africa, then and now

Source: The Economist, By permission.

What a difference a decade makes.

“From the day I started my job, ” said John Micklethwait, the Economist editor in chief since 2006, “I’ve heard from people about that hopeless continent cover.” He reflected on the legacy of that cover, and the genesis of the starkly different 2011 “Africa Rising” cover article:

People have gone to great pains to point out to me that if you invested in a basket of African stocks on the day we declared Africa a “hopeless continent” you would be doing quite well today. In 2011, our reporters were writing about the growth of several African countries, and it prompted us to consider whether there was something bigger here to write about. Whenever you run a cover on a big issue, there’s a small group that will say, “Well, we’ve known that for years.” There’s a much larger group who will see it as new, but then recognize that the trend is all around them. I think that’s the case here.

John and his team acknowledged the Economist’s dire predictions at the start of the decade. In a striking parallel, their lead editorial in 2011 took a similar tour, and found a continent transformed:

From Ghana in the west to Mozambique in the south, Africa’s economies are consistently growing faster than those of almost any other region of the world. At least a dozen have expanded by more than 6 percent a year for six or more years. Ethiopia will grow by 7.5 percent this year, without a drop of oil to export. Once a byword for famine, it is now the world’s tenth-largest producer of livestock... Severe income disparities persist through much of the continent; but a genuine middle class is emerging.²

Numerous data pointed to a continent that had spent the last decade and more going in the right direction, including reduced inflation, budget deficits, and foreign debt. Labor productivity and gross domestic product rose, and continental growth rates projected into the foreseeable future of at least 5 percent on a base of about $2 billion (slightly smaller than Brazil, slightly larger than India or Russia).^* Of the ten countries that grew fastest in the decade from 2001 to 2010, six were African. Looking ahead to 2015, that number rises to seven.

Figure 2–2: Top 10 countries in GDP growth over the past decade and the next five years

Source: Ernst & Young, Building Bridges: Ernst & Young’s 2012 Attractiveness Survey–Africa, 201. By permission.

External factors like the demand in Asia for raw materials are widely reported and important as driving Africa’s growth. Some of these are discussed in chapter 7. However, they do not explain growth in countries that are resource-poor or trading little. CEOs succeeding in Africa provide insight on more internal drivers of growth, decades in the making. Even business leaders in export-driven businesses like oil and mining perceive Africa’s growth to date as driven by three forces largely internal to Africa:

• A revolution in governance

• An evolution in education

• A transformation in communications

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