Your editorial “The middle-power competition in Africa” is most timely (FT View, August 30). But the assertion that “most African governments are squandering” the new opportunities is overly harsh, as evidenced by the IMF’s forecast that the world’s seven fastest-growing economies (not including countries with populations under 1mn) in 2024 will all be in Africa.
Your editorial nevertheless contains crucial suggestions that African leaders will be interested in, especially as they engage in a potentially transformative exercise to elect a new chair of the African Union Commission.
Africa’s vast natural resources have for some time been an indispensable engine of growth for industrialised countries. But attempts to leverage this huge advantage has languished in the absence till now of a determined push, or indeed even an effective mechanism, to achieve the agreed goal of an African continental free trade area, or possibly a single market.
A prosperous Africa is finally within our reach. That is why the election of the AUC chair should be seen as more important than the election of any individual national leader. But unlike those national elections, this one has unfortunately escaped global media attention. Hopefully this oversight will be rectified as awareness of this exercise by the African Union spreads beyond Africa’s shores.
Salim Lone
Former Spokesman for Raila Odinga, Kenya’s Prime Minister (2008-2013) Princeton, NJ, US
