Kigali Lessons

The month of May is conference season in Africa. The continental jet set spends the month fleeting from one high-level confab to another. It usually begins with the World Economic Forum (which this year was held in Abuja), which in my books takes itself far too seriously, with colour-coded registration badges telling you where you can and cannot go, somewhat reducing its usefulness. The other big conference in May is the Annual Meetings of the African Development Bank. This used to be slightly too big and sprawling for its own good, but this year, the conference in Kigali turned out to be the most useful convention I have ever attended.

I was invited by the AfDB office in Tunis to moderate a couple of sessions in the three-day pre-meetings (these are high-level panels that take place before the board meetings of the bank). I ended up moderating two more, and the lot ranged from discussions on how to best benefit from Africa’s natural resources, to the value of special economic zones, and what to do about the ocean and the ‘blue economy’ in Africa, which is suffering from overexploitation and a lack of attention from governments. The panelists on my sessions included Trevor Manuel, the outgoing South African Planning Minister; to Pascal Lamy, the former head of the World Trade Organisation; and a host of government ministers. One panel included Daphne Mashile-Nkosi, who’s running one of South Africa’s (and the world’s) largest manganese mines, and I was fortunate to have former Presidents Thabo Mbeki and Festus Mogae in the audience.

The meeting was head-spinningly high-end, but more than that, there were a few crucial take-aways I came away with during the week in Kigali.

First, Africa is a country, and there is no way to get away from that. I mean this only half-facetiously. Africans have suffered from the world’s ignorance for a long time, ranging from the clueless foreigners who send salaams to someone in Nigeria through a traveller to Nairobi; to newscasters who remain ignorant in the extreme, and who should know better. Just in the past few weeks, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour spoke of ‘neighbouring’ Uganda in reference to Nigeria, and NBC’s Brian Williams confidently spoke of Boko Haram’s activities in Kenya. These are embarrassing and annoying, but can largely be ignored. The reason why we should embrace our broader African identity is that the development this century will happen at the large scale. Individual countries are too small a canvas for some of the projects that need to take place, and we can only think of (and plan) them on a regional and continental level. Broad-based development will only take place at this scale.

The second takeaway is how seriously Rwandese take security, and how casually we take ours. While indeed this was a high-profile meeting, with the requisite level of armed security, this was my second time in Rwanda, and the security protocol was the same. First, everyone is treated equally, regardless of stature. Government ministers and billionaires all had to go through the metal detectors and endure pat-downs. It was quite egalitarian to stand in line with VVIPs, all of us emptying our pockets regardless of our stature. We Kenyans ruefully commented on how many would have skipped the line claiming privileges, and how lax the checks would have been.

Third, the AfDB is at a point of transition. The formidable President, Donald Kaberuka, retires in a year. His has been a transformational Presidency, leaving the bank with coffers and a reputation that make it a global player. The quiet, but furious, lobbying to replace him has begun, with hats thrown into the ring ranging from the Ethiopian Finance Minister, Ato Sufian Ahmed, to the dapper Nigerian Agriculture Minister Dr. Akinwumi Adesina. But let us be revolutionary. I’d like to propose one more: Trevor Manuel. Mr. Manuel retires this week when the new South African government is sworn in, and so he will have quite a bit of time on his hands. He has the right pedigree, having guided South Africa’s economy to its longest period of sustained growth in its history. He was so revered that when he briefly resigned in 2008 in the aftermath of Thabo Mbeki’s recall fiasco, the markets and the South African Rand shuddered. They were only put to rights when he clarified that he would still serve at the pleasure of President Kgalema Motlanthe. He would sustain the bank’s momentum in development and being part of the global conversation, and, above all, Africa would benefit from his impressive knowledge base. I don’t cast a vote, but those who do should keep his name in mind.

The month of conferences will still throw up one more symposium. I’m off early tomorrow morning to moderate a panel at the IMF’s ‘Africa Rising’ conference in Maputo. The attention being lavished on the continent means that those in the know have positioned themselves to surf on that wave. I’ll let you know how it goes. 

This was also published in the Business Daily on 27 May 2014, at http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Opinion-and-Analysis/Africa-should-embrace-a-unified-identity-/-/539548/2327204/-/item/0/-/7cehnpz/-/index.html