UZOAMAKA MADU, POLITICAL COMMENTATOR – Entrepreneurship has always been booming in Africa! Specifically, survival entrepreneurship – where people turn to entrepreneurship is in order to fulfil their basic needs as opposed to some grand plan to be a market leader. Survival entrepreneurship is a response to the lack of basic resources afforded to people by the state, whether it is manufactured goods, transport, energy, education or healthcare.

Yet, the collapse of the commodity boom created a more aggravated push for countries and their citizens to invent other ways to survive because benefits like unrestrained imports were no longer sustainable. Beside this, was the peak of the financial crisis, when African professionals who were located in the U.S. and Western Europe returned to their countries after they lost their jobs. They returned with top-grade technical skills, managerial experience, and international networks. But because there were limited available jobs in Africa as the recession destroyed stock markets and businesses, most of these individuals went into entrepreneurship and partnered with local professionals.

That is why today, we are seeing African companies with core intellectual properties (IPs) emerging out of Africa. Like Safi Sarvi(an organic fertilizer producer) and UMT (a 25-minute non-blood malaria tester) which are focused on solving local problems. This is unlike in the past when African businesses were centered on becoming a representative of a global company, now new companies are creating their own innovations and where possible competing with the foreign ones.

This offers prospects for local companies that offer products that can be priced without direct consideration of the forex market – and I would like to say here that this is of great benefit to the local population and the local entrepreneur as they are dependent on forex market prices but are rather counting solely on the local market prices, thereby enabling them to be competitive. [UM1]

The old construct where foreign brands merely open sales offices in Africa without design or research centres is now being challenged by African entrepreneurs. Now locals have the edge because they have embraced frugal innovation. This again means we see direct benefits accruing to local people – they have the power to determine what they want to sell in line with local demands and needs, also it is a truly African endeavor in this sense so we don’t see so much of these monies made being expatriated to head offices or shareholders outside of the country’s borders and therefore it is more likely to stay in the country, be reinvested within those borders and again accrue benefits to local populations. [UM2]

These type of entrepreneurs will transform the continent with the brainpower of the citizens and offer the road map to a new African economy by providing African solutions for African problems!

Migration as a driver

Whilst the market realities are the driving force of the type of entrepreneurship we see on the continent, we also cannot sit in Brussels at the heart of the EU, where solutions are being sought to stem the migratory flows from African countries to Europe, and not look at some of the policy drivers that have pushed the African entrepreneurship narrative to the forefront of mainstream media and shifted the focus of development aid increasingly away from budget support to governments and towards private sector investments.

The EU has recently in the midst of the increased migratory flows, been framing its development policy around ‘tackling the root causes of migration’ which include low employment levels, slow economic growth and therefore instability – essentially poverty And it has put its money where its mouth is in terms of turning this shift in narrative into reality – the EU’s European External Investment Plan (EIP), launched in 2017, for example would encourage €44 billion in private investments by offering a combination of grants, loans and financial guarantees worth €4.1 billion to boost jobs, growth and stability in Africa and the European Neighbourhood countries. The G20 Partnership with Africa is also supporting private investment and employment through joint compacts with specific African countries who have the appetite to not only partner but also construct their own offering/business case for investment.

My point here is that the role of European countries in this African entrepreneurship story has been to increasingly direct development aid monies to the private sector activities, investing in start-ups and the business environment in African countries – to create an enabling environment for entrepreneurship. The policy imperative towards Africa is moving increasingly away from development aid in the building schools and hospitals sense, and more towards growing the private sector, creating jobs and economic growth. Since this is the new policy direction, the western/European media narrative has had a more business-focused and entrepreneurial focus to it – which is also positive, images of hungry, abandoned children are slowly being replaced or counteracted with images of young, professional, career hungry Africans, and business focused media outlets are also carrying more of these entrepreneurial stories, this is causing a slight shift in the media landscape – this has added a more diverse and richer spectrum of African stories to the mainstream media offering about the continent.

Fetishization of African entrepreneurship

The darker side of this shift in development policy is the almost fetishization of African entrepreneurship, to a degree where it is almost treated as the magic pill administered by outsiders to solve all of Africa’s quite complex problems. Now this does run the risk of fundamental problems being neglected. One of Kenya’s best-known tech investors, Ory Okolloh criticizes what she calls the “fetishization” of entrepreneurship in Africa and I would like you to listen directly to her explanation of the problem….

More and more policy makers from Africa are pushing their countries into economic transformation through industrialization. Moderator Jean Bossuyt wonders how this transformation will shape the relationship between Africa and Europe: “The EU wants to build a new balanced relationship, but at the same time it’s stretching out the boundaries of privileged deals being made during the Post-Cotonou negotiations. Is Europe afraid of a mature partnership with Africa? In the development arm of the European Commission, DEVCO, you hear people talking about two big things. In the first place they talk about a stronger private sector, private funding and the end of official aid. The other big topic is migration, rising populism and inequalities in the world that have not been taken care of.”

Karel Uyttendaele, coordinator of the program Circular Migration for African higher educated, is definitely a defender of the first topic being discussed inside of DEVCO. “Big modern manufacturing multinationals who invest in the African continent contribute through taxation to public expenditure on education, health care and employment. In that way an empowered middle class rises where everyone has a good job and a wage. After a while, this African middle class installs human rights by using its own strength to create unions and so on. You can see it as a bottom-up dynamic to implement human rights. So far, other ways of installing human rights in Africa have not worked.”

But maybe empowering a middle class in more than 50 superdiverse countries in Africa trough investments by multinational companies isn’t as easy as it seems. Professor Nikolay Dentchev, advocates a more social approach: “Investments should also be sustainable and responsible through social entrepreneurship and Corporate Social Responsibility. People who are left behind in societies possess a lot of capacities, but we need to offer them the same chances as everyone else. Khadijat Abdulkadir, founder of Digital African Woman, interferes: “When you’re being disadvantaged and you’re trying to survive, you trust on your first instinct. It’s only later on that you can start to think about other things. Europe is being too paternalistic with its kind of view upon socio-economic reality in Africa, the EU should give young Africans more voice and ownership of projects. It looks as if Europe’s relationship with Africa is still too focussed on aid.”

Is it true Europe still has an aid addiction with Africa? Patrick Develtere, Principal Adviser for the European Social Policy at the European Political Strategy Centre (EPSC), reminds us that president of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker clearly articulated during his 2018 State of the Union speech that Africa doesn’t need any more charity. Instead, it needs true and fair partnerships. Develtere: “EU-Africa destinies are linked. Africa for example has resources such as minerals that are essential for international and European businesses, but we can’t allow a ‘hit and run strategy’. We have to use a multi-stakeholder approach to focus on mutual interests and balanced win-win situations.”

Develtere calls this comprehensive approach a ‘whole of society approach’: “I’m not against the private sector, but private sector investments will only go to African countries if there’s an environment that is inviting those investments. European investors need a conducive environment that is not only about fiscal regime and about the availability of electricity and roads and so on, it’s also about social stability. That means that you also have to bring in the social partners such as workers’ and employers’ organisations that have to build a relationship with each other. European social partners are another kind of actor that should be present to harbour this relationship. Also universities play an extremely important role, let alone if you look at the demographic revolution. Africa will have 4 billion inhabitants of which the majority will be youngsters by 2100. European universities need to work together with their colleagues in Africa on the basis of a balanced relationship.”

Abdulkadir acknowledges the importance of a balanced EU-Africa relationship: “Africa, for example, can learn from European education and tools, but European citizens can learn a lot from Africa too. Attitudes, policies and entrepreneurship are intertwined. Right now there’s an imbalance, European entrepreneurs can just go to Africa and can easily get what they want, whereas Africans coming to Europe have a lot of difficulties with paperwork and bureaucracy just to get a visa. A good relationship is one thing, but why do we feel Europe has to be part of the debate about growth in Africa? Why do we need to industrialize together with Europe, can’t we just do it on our own?”

“If you want to industrialize Africa by Africans, go ahead,” picks up professor Dentchev, “but I don’t understand why we wouldn’t put the strengths of Europe and Africa together? Let’s not start from weaknesses but from a solid base. And is it true that Africa is fed up by European interference? Maybe, but few governments or organisations refuse help.” According to Abdulkadir, young Africans still aren’t being heard enough and should get more involved in grassroot socio-economic initiatives: “Africa is trapped, right now we’re not allowed to explore our creativity. Young people are growing up in a different economic reality, but power structures are preventing opportunities.”

Develtere frames her remark by saying development isn’t just a sequence and that everything should happen simultaneously: “Good governance, civil society, social partners and a sustainable economy should be strengthened at the same time. EU-Africa dependency is too high. The Cotonou Agreement (2000-2020) is almost coming to an end. We’re discussing a new post-Cotonou agreement but Europe wants to maintain a preferential relationship with Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific, because all together we are more than half of all UN countries. So if we want to weigh on the debates in the United Nations, we can only do that together.”

After a very complex and loaded history, Africa and Europe are still very bound to each other. There are opportunities on both sides to change and get rid of mutual prejudices which are not fit for the world of today. Entrepreneurship can be a leverage to make an end to these prejudices and trigger a new partnership mode. Moderator Bossuyt concludes: “if we want entrepreneurship to be a force of change and create all sorts of benefits, principles of engagement are key: initiatives should be locally driven with local solutions and contain local expertise. Paradigm shifts are needed too. This will not happen if we don’t move from European aid to something else. A lot of chances to move forward on a structural way are laying ahead if we follow the investment paradigm or the multi-stakeholder approach. But if we want to move, let’s above all not forget to combine human rights with these complex approaches to see the whole picture.”