What Do Africans Believe About Themselves? (Adapted from Africa’s Moment by Pete Ondeng)

What Do Africans Believe About Themselves?

(Adapted from Africa’s Moment by Pete Ondeng)

On March 30, 1998, four days before my thirty-ninth birthday, Time ran an unusually upbeat, forward-looking cover story entitled “Africa Rising.” I remember reading the article with great interest— not so much for its journalistic excellence, but more for the unexpected message of hope that seemed to flow from its pages.

“Hope,” the article stated, “is probably Africa’s rarest commodity.” It went on to say that although this hope may be buried amid the despair that haunts the continent, there now seemed to be more optimism in the air about Africa than there had been in decades.

This story is not about the Africa you think you know. The usual images are painted in darkest colors. At the end of the twentieth century, we are repeatedly reminded, Africa is a nightmarish world where chaos reigns. Nothing works. Poverty and corruption rule. War, famine, and pestilence pay repeated calls. The land, air, water are raped, fouled, polluted. Chronic instability gives way to lifelong dictatorships. Every nation’s hand is out, begging aid from distrustful donors. Endlessly disappointed, 740 million people sink into hopelessness.…[However] …out of sight of our narrow focus on disaster, another Africa is rising, an Africa that works.…4

The article astounded me. Why would Time, a prestigious and internationally respected news magazine, come out with such a strong message of hope for Africa when the rest of the world was reeling from the shock of destabilized global financial markets? I recall so distinctly that 1998 was a year in which the whole world seemed to be groaning from the effects of one of the greatest economic catastrophes of modern times. Most of eastern Asia, including Japan, was in deep recession. Indonesia’s gross domestic product (GDP) was expected to fall that year by as much as fifteen percent, and by six to seven percent in South Korea and Thailand. And it wasn’t just Asia. Russia’s government had defaulted on its debt, and its economic predicament was worsening almost by the day.

Even some developed economies, such as those of Britain and Canada, were slowing. Wall Street had fallen sharply from its peak with tumbling share prices shrinking the world’s financial wealth by billions of dollars. The sickness had spread far and wide, and as far as my simple eyes could see, Africa was not exempted.

The Time article was beautiful prose, to say the least. Deep down, I wanted to believe it. I wanted to accept that the future of Africa would be different from its past. In the secrecy of my thoughts, I allowed myself the space to dream, to wonder if maybe, just maybe, Africa was destined to always travel in the opposite direction from the rest of the world. Could it be, unlikely as it was, that as the rest of the world spiraled out of control, this could truly be Africa’s turn to rise? Was this the appointed time for our wheels of fortune to begin turning?

Having grown accustomed to endless prophesies of doom about Africa, I found the Time cover story to be surprising but certainly refreshing reading. Encouraging as it was, however, the story provoked in me an intense anxiety about what lay ahead for Africa and its seven hundred million or so people.

The timing of the Time article did not escape my notice: U. S. President Bill Clinton was about to make his much-heralded trip to Africa. During that six-nation tour, President Clinton would speak warmly of African successes. “One hundred years from now,” he said, “your grandchildren and mine will look back and say, this was the beginning of a new African renaissance.”

President Clinton’s remarks were in reference to a fledgling movement that had been born out of the inspiration of Thabo Mbeki, then deputy president of South Africa under Nelson Mandela. Earlier that year, Mbeki had opened a highly publicized African renaissance conference in Johannesburg where he had challenged Africans to seize the moment and take hold of their future. “The new African world which the African renaissance seeks to build is one of democracy, peace and stability, sustainable development and a better life for people, nonracism and non-sexism, equality among the nations, and a just and democratic system of international governance.”5 Mkebi’s speech was as inspiring as it was challenging.

Like many other grand ideas that had come before it, the African renaissance movement would end up being short-lived. For that brief moment, however, it served as a rallying point for idealists like myself who wished to see magic falling down from the sky and transforming Africa into a new reality of prosperity and peace.