We all would be monkeys swinging in trees! Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s recent presentation at TED Global 2009 in Oxford is delightfully instructive. In the video, available on Youtube, Chimamanda spoke about the danger of a single story. How a story can distort ones thinking about people and countries. That lack of balance in a story which invariably sticks and informs worldviews. She wasn’t posturing. A string of humorous personal anecdotes laced her 19-minute presentation.

A blog that posted the video commented on her poise and grace. Her message was more catching. For far too long Africa has been parcelled together as one country. Chimamanda recalls an announcement during her flight to London. Passengers were asked to donate towards a charity project for India, Africa and other countries. The African Union (AU) has 52 member states. Never mind that the 19th century scramble for Africa parcelled the continent into disparate groups.

Or that slave trade and business in commodities (agricultural and mineral) – a partnership between a few venal African and Western (and now East-Asian) people – has persistently dogged the continent’s development. Indeed there are exceptions: Botswana.

Yet this ambiguity about Africa remains. Always at the mercy of what Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala calls the “neighbourhood effect”. Bad news about, say, Guinea sullies the image of the entire continent. No less, news about Zimbabwe, Darfur, Nigeria, Kenya etc, have the same effect.

Of late, Ghana and South Africa, to some extent, receive positive coverage in the western media. What’s striking is that unpicking Africa seems tedious when the story is told by another. Most of the time, it’s about chaos, catastrophe, carnage and corruption. Mind you, we (indigenous commentators, authors and reporters) share part of the blame – it’s easier to denigrate than constructively criticise.  Take the good chunk of African literature that have received rave reviews and awards.

After reading E.C.Osondu’s prize winning story Waiting, I came away with the impression that he must have taken Binyavanga Wainaina’s How to write about Africa to heart. “In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving.”

Similarly, Fr Uwem Akpan, a Nigerian priest who’s Say You’re One Them, a collection of short stories, just made Oprah Winfrey’s book club. Oprah Winfrey noted that "This is the first time I have ever chosen a collection of short stories. Each one of them left me gasping and profoundly moved". The book is described as a “singular collection [that] will also take the reader inside Nigeria, Benin and Ethiopia, revealing in beautiful prose the harsh realities of life in Africa for children.” At least the book differentiates between African countries.

But the tales are no less harrowing as Martin Meredith’s The State of Africa: A History of Fifty Years of Independence, a deftly written book that traverses the woes of post-independence Africa. I’m yet to get myself to finish it. To be sure, it details the rapaciousness of different leaders in cohort with their American, British, French, Chinese, Spanish and Cuban peers. With such stories as a staple one may almost be forgiven for accepting that Africa is hopeless. A view The Economist held in 2000.

That “undue harshness” was made up for with an October 2008 editorial “There is hope – despite the persistence of Africa’s natural and man-made horrors, the latest trend is cheeringly positive.” All the same, Africa’s hope and prospects come down to why she’s capital-starved. Most of Africa’s capital is abroad. Either as money filched by dodgy politicians and businesspeople or Africans that have migrated abroad. There’s nothing wrong with relocating, especially when strife is too rife.

But there’s a whole lot wrong with asset-stripping. Those who divvy up state coffers get away with these horrors because of shady western businesspeople and banks abroad. Sanusi Lamido, the CBN governor, nails the issue on the head: “I think that corruption is a two-way street: there are those who give and those who take. We must fight it from both ends.”

If numbers could kill

It’s been alleged that some British expats, acting as middlemen for Securency, a firm partly-owned by the Reserve Bank of Australia, bribed Nigerian officials with $10 million to print the new polymer naira notes. Naturally, the money trail is shrouded in secrecy – no thanks to financial centres, like London, that permit no-questions asked financial transactions. The consequence is no “small fry” according to a Tax Justice Network (TJN) blog post.

Research from University of Massachusetts, Amherst on money that has left the shores of 40 African countries says “Real capital flight over the 35-year period amounted to about $420 billion (in 2004 dollars) for the 40 countries as a whole. Including imputed interest earnings, the accumulated stock of capital flight was about $607 billion as of end-2004.”

James Ibori, Jonathan Dariye, DSP Alamasiegha and the Nigerians implicated in the Halliburton cash-for-contract scandal and goodness knows how many others, have found havens for hiding egregious businesses and dirty money. Such places, the banks and the laws that permit financial secrecy, aid and abet capital flight. To be sure, there’s has been cooperation to stamp capital flows that fund terrorism. However, isn’t it ironic that countries starved of funds, which rightly belong to them, can become havens for terrorists?

In short ‘vulnerable’ sub-Saharan Africa is a net creditor to the rest of the world. This amount far exceeds what Africa receives in aid annually or requires for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Undetected, most of it stays out and of course, in cash-strapped times as these, such money will ‘aid’ the recovery of ‘beneficiary’ countries. Just when the billionth African will be born this year.

Patrick Smith, editor-in-chief of The Africa Report, thinks this demographic bulge can be turned into a dividend. Africa is the fastest urbanising continent. Her population is the youngest and growing ahead of others. These changes, coupled with the right policies – expansion of intra-Africa trade, better governance, pro-growth regulation, a healthy and educated population can set African countries on a sustainable growth path. With Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa as “economic locomotives” Africa may just break free.

Innovation: biofuel cookers (these tackle poverty and reduce carbon emissions), mobile money (to extend banking to the unbanked). Irrigated farms plus fertilisers, seeds, agro-input centres - for direct procurement and distribution of agricultural inputs - backed by credit must be used to spur Africa’s way overdue green revolution.

In addition, industrialisation by harnessing low-skilled farmers that migrate to the city will be a boon for labour-intensive manufacturing clusters. Thermal, wind and solar power stations will generate decent electricity. (It’s said the Inga dam in Democratic Republic of Congo can generate enough electricity for the world). Rising productivity and prosperity contribute to political and socioeconomic cohesion.  

Alas, all this could be a pie-in-the-sky. A “political time bomb with tens of millions of hungry and hungry city dwellers.” Scores of idle, jobless and frustrated young men can be a threat to political and social stability – pictures of Niger Delta militants giving up their arms isn’t a film trick. Each African government will do well to face reality and discard rhetoric. Quit spoofing the people. Pluralism: multi-ethnicity and religion differences, is a strength not a threat.

The days of quibbling about which cronies get what contracts or ministerial positions must end. Rather a competent, honest and service-centred government should be the focus. It will present Africa as potential pole of growth as the world gravitates from the west to the east. A continent not just in need of assistance but partnership to curb capital flight, promote trade, investment and gradually discard the stereotype of death, disease and disaster.