Faced with an increasingly worried world, Africa, present at the Davos Forum, the meeting of decision-makers on the planet, embodies the future. The boss of the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, has not failed, like others, to salute the dynamism of the continent, a land of investment today unavoidable …
By Assanatou Baldé
The time when Western media headlines in the early 2000s « Africa is cursed » is definitely over. Now the future is dreaming in Africa. In Davos, it was at the « rendezvous » to assert its strengths. Among the leaders of the continent who participated in the Forum, bringing together for 48 years now, the world’s economic policies and decision-makers, Rwandan President Paul Kagamé, Uganda’s Head of State, Yoweri Musevini, the Prime Minister of Ethiopia Abiy Ahmed, his Libyan counterpart Faeiez Al Serrag, as well as the head of the government of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa. Civil society figures include Congolese doctor Denis Mukwege, who is treating victims of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and a recent Nobel Peace Prize winner.
« Europe is worried about tomorrow, Africa not »
Few today are economic leaders who do business without including Africa. Jack Ma, the founder of Chinese giant e-commerce Alibaba, has understood that the continent is synonymous with multiple opportunities. He told a press conference in Davos in the presence of Rwandan President Paul Kagame, the ambitions of his company in Africa, hailing the economic potential of the continent, he believes more conducive to business than « Too worried » Europe facing the expansionism of Beijing. According to Jack Ma, « Africa is like China twenty years ago, with so many young people who do not fear the future. Europe is worried about tomorrow, Africa isn’tt. While today, the world is undermined by suspicion, « Europe is worried too much: we ask how can we regulate this? How can we protect ourselves? So we do not go first in European countries, we go there and where we believe in us, Africa, « he reiterated.
Words already transformed into action, since the Chinese e-commerce giant created in early November 2018 an online trading platform in Rwanda, which it considers as the future largest hub of the continent. For the entrepreneur, Africa, home to 1.2 billion people, with a young population, offers « a huge potential for technology companies » but on the condition that « infrastructure and Internet are accessible to all « . He called on African governments to take this into account and not cut off the Internet, at the risk of « harming themselves ».
Structural reforms needed to cope with globalization
The African continent, which will reach 2.5 billion people in 2050, faces many challenges and will have to find a way to put young people on the job market, who are currently suffering from mass unemployment, which often pushes them to exile to European countries.
Meanwhile, as emphasized by the African Development Bank (AFDB), the continent, which is now at a crossroads in the face of a constantly changing globalization, will have to make profound structural reforms to diversify its economy « in order to meet its multiple challenges.
