A brief commodity price recovery in 2016 and ongoing drop in the value of most African currencies did not set the stage for renewed competitiveness, business confidence, or TNC investment, but instead catalyzed another round of fiscal crises, extreme current account deficits, sovereign debt defaults, and popular protests. In reality, after the 2011 peak of the commodity super-cycle and subsequent price crash, it was simply illogical to proclaim that Africa was prospering in “an open world economy,” given that so many of the continent’s economies depend on mineral and oil deposits whose extraction is dominated by transnational corporations (TNCs) and whose prices have been on a roller coaster since 2002. Its economic outlook is positive.” 2 The conference was arranged by German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble to promote his G20 Compact with Africa, whose “main aim is to lower the level of risk for private investments” (but in the run-up to the German election, he and Angela Merkel were obviously also concerned to give the impression the strategy would reduce Europe’s African refugee crisis). Deutsche Bundesbank president Jens Weidmann claimed in June 2017 at a Berlin conference that “Africa stands ready to benefit from an open world economy.
His most recent book, coedited with Ana Garcia, is BRICS: An Anti-Capitalist Critique (Haymarket, 2015).Ī few years ago, at the very moment that Africa’s GDP ceased its rapid 2002–11 increase, a profound myth took hold in elite economic and political circles, embodied in the slogan “Africa Rising.” 1 That myth persists. Patrick Bond is a professor of political economy at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.
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