Not so dark continent

In Bond Street tube station an ad catches my eye every morning: ‘140 million people, 9th largest market in the world, 42 billion tonnes of bitumen, 3rd largest movie industry in the world, Africa’s fastest growing telecommunications market. Nigeria …it’s more than what you think it is.’ The effect is slightly ruined by the grammar of that final slogan, but the message gets across: anyone in the business or investment world who has written Nigeria off as nothing more than a no-hope nation of clever but fraudulent letter-writers is making a mistake. The same could be said of much of the rest of Africa. It’s not hard to find misery: start in Zimbabwe with Robert Mugabe’s 82nd birthday party taking place in a country where average life expectancy is now only 34; move on to the Aids crisis in South Africa, the drought that hit northern Kenya last year, the war in Sudan and the child soldiers of Uganda.