We all know Africa is changing and so what?

By Patrick Mayoh

I just read another one of those typical articles on Africa. By typical, I mean one article praising the growing economy, potentials and positive outlook of the continent. Many of those are being written nowadays and you can hardly spend a day without reading about another piece on the prowesses of the continent. 

I used to enjoy reading those ( I actually created this blog to highlight the many changes happening on the African Continent) and I still do, but I feel we need to change the nature of the conversation on Africa. It is all exciting to know the Economist does not refer to Africa as the hopeless continent anymore, but as a continent that is rising. It is flattering to witness how Wall Street and other stock markets are all getting excited about Africa. Now that Growth figures have reached a tipping point in Asia, it feels good to know that investors are now turning to Africa for economic opportunities.

Still one has to be cautious here. I am very optimistic about the prospects of Africa, but I know many Africans are yet to enjoy the fruits of economic growth in their respective economies. I know we lack basic infrastructure on a massive scale, I am aware of the fact that we need more educated leaders and I know poverty despite the rising middle class is still rampant. Therefore I believe in changing the nature of our conversation.

Let us look at the countries that are doing extremely well economically like Ghana, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Angola and to a certain extent Nigeria and as thinkers let us write on how we can replicate what they are doing elsewhere on the continent. Let us not highlight only success stories but let us think about how these success stories can benefit other countries that are still lagging behind economically. I actually wrote an article on how other African Countries could replicate the success story of Rwanda.

Let us write about educating our leaders and about providing the right skills to our graduates. Let us write about how we can stop the brain drain and why we should get our best brains back from wherever they are so the can help develop the continent.

I am excited things are improving on the continent and I can see that, but I would like the conversation on Africa to shift on how we can make this happen even quicker and on a more massive scale. Africa is still the poorest continent anyway, so getting all excited about changes is good but thinking on how we can accelerate this is even much better.

Patrick Mayoh is a chief strategy officer at aura cameroon