Too many wives, too little time in West, South Africa

The African Development Bank has released its African Economic Outlook for the year.

East Africa came out well, relative to the other regions. Overall, Africa’s gross domestic product hit a seven-year high in 2018 at 3.5 per cent, and is projected to climb further to 4 per cent this year.

Africa’s two largest economies, Nigeria and South Africa, were in the doghouse, none of them achieving growth beyond 2 per cent.

Africa’s economic growth will once again be driven by East Africa, which will be the fastest-expanding region for the fifth straight year, the AfDB said.

East Africa set the pace as the fastest growing in 2018 at 5.7 per cent, followed by North Africa at 4.9 per cent, with West Africa coming third at 3.3 per cent, while Central and Southern Africa coming next at 2.2 and 1.2 per cent respectively.

The stars in the East African cast are Djibouti, Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Tanzania, where between 2010 and 2018, growth averaged almost 6 per cent.

And then the laggards: “…In several countries, notably Burundi and Comoros, growth remains weak due to political uncertainty. In South Sudan, GDP continues to fall due to political and military conflicts and because the 2015 peace agreement has not been implemented,” the report says.

In West Africa, despite the underwhelming regional average, there were some “A performers”: The usual suspects, Cote d’Ivoire at 7.4 per cent, and Senegal 7 per cent.

In a statement read for him at the launch of the report in the Nigerian capital Abuja, AfDB President Akinwumi Adesina offered a laundry list of the varying severity of the challenges in West Africa, which partly explain why it lags behind other regions.

He listed shocks from reduced commodity prices, adverse weather conditions, political and regional security, unemployment and under-employment, low domestic revenue mobilization, persistent fragility, growing external debt, and migration… You get the drift.

And here is where we get off that bus. It’s not the things that bank presidents and central governors would do, but to begin to better explain some of the varying differences in economic performance between regions and countries in Africa, we shall have to be politically incorrect.

At the regional level, one of the most obvious differences between West and East Africa, for example, is polygamy.

East Africans are generally less polygamous, and where it is still exists in an extreme form like in South Sudan, the country has gone astray. Our West African brothers are really terrible on this.

Lately, fortunately, we have started seeing economists—and also presidents like Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni and Rwanda’s Paul Kagame—pointing fingers at too much religion. It’s a good thing to be God-fearing, but economically ruinous to be consumed by religion.

It undermines enterprise, as people wait for manna to fall from heaven, or invest most of their time in prayer vigils, instead of going out to hustle.

Plus, it thwarts the rationality and scientific thinking necessary for creating wealth, so you end up giving all your hard-earned money to a pastor promising you a miracle if you go to church without underwear, instead of investing it on a stock at the bourse.

There is religion in East Africa, yes, but too much of it in West and Southern Africa.

Charles Onyango-Obbo is publisher of Africapedia.com and explainer Roguechiefs.com. [email protected]