Omolewa Shobogun

Category: Political Economy

  • A case for rural infrastructure upgrade in Africa

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    I scrutinise websites a lot, especially websites of organisations from the West that work in Africa or whose work is about Africa. From time to time, I question why they use a particular picture on their website, and not another. “Why are they using a picture of rural Iseyin in Nigeria, and not a picture of Lagos Island?” “Why use a picture of Kibera in Nairobi, and not of Karen or Gigiri?” Representation matters, yes. But at this point, we must also ask ourselves the question,

    Which part of Africa is not Africa?

    Everywhere in Africa rightfully represents Africa, even though we may question the politics of media representation. It is time we stopped (only) whining about what kind of pictures are shown and think about changing the bulk of the existing content to be photographed. It is time we paid attention to holistic development in Africa.

    In many cases, rural areas are not the only ones affected; certain parts within the urban areas, often referred to as peri-urban or ‘rurban’ areas, are also typically left behind in terms of infrastructure development.

    I have deliberately included ‘infrastructure’ in the topic of this post to clarify that I do not mean a total overhaul of rural areas, depending on what this would mean to you. I do not mean the transformation of rural areas to urban areas, and I definitely do not mean that a process of gentrification be set in motion. I have also included ‘infrastructure’ in the topic because I am aware of the tendency to equate infrastructural development with development, and I would not insinuate that or write anything to suggest such. For me, the most important denominator in development is people. Human development is the most fundamental form of development; every other form of development ultimately stems from it.

    This is also why I have chosen the word ‘upgrade’ instead of ‘development’; to ensure that you understand what I mean and what I do not mean. Therefore, by rural infrastructure upgrade, I mean a systematic improvement in the infrastructure of a rural area, with the goal of enhancing the economic, social, and overall living conditions in these areas, and contributing to the overall economy of the country.

    From Addis Ababa to Cape Town, to Lagos, to Dakar, to Bangui, to Casablanca, the evidence of hyper-concentration on urban infrastructural development is scattered across Africa. Although issues of infrastructural underdevelopment in Africa are mostly attributed to Sub-Saharan Africa, the Northern part of Africa is not exempt. For instance, earlier this year, in July, King Mohammed VI of Morocco admitted that “some regions – particularly in rural areas – are still suffering from poverty and vulnerability, due to a lack of infrastructure and basic facilities.”

    Also, the government of Ethiopia has recently directed more attention towards a systematic urban infrastructure upgrade with a heavy focus on the capital city, Addis Ababa. A relevant example of such an upgrade is the Beautify Sheger project. Yet, many of the rural and peri-urban areas in the country remain infrastructure-starved.

    My goal in this post extends beyond advocating for equity between rural, peri-urban, and urban areas or making another clarion call to bridge the rural-urban infrastructure divide. My goal is to demonstrate how a systematic infrastructural upgrade in rural areas of Africa can speed up the continent’s socio-economic development process and serve as a catalyst for existing continental development projects, like the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).

    What can rural infrastructure upgrade do for Africa?

    At the early stage of writing this post, I had a conversation with my colleague that started with him asking, “What are you working on?” One of the things he said that stood out to me was that “it is not fair that whenever rural development is discussed, the conversation usually drifts to agriculture.” (I do not quote him verbatim.)

    I thought about it for a moment and realised that he may have a valid point. “Unfortunately”, I replied to him, “I might just be doing the same.” I did not think much about whether it was fair or not, but I thought—and still think—that I am justified in writing this way, as I am presenting a case for economic and social development as outcomes of rural infrastructure upgrades.

    In a video that went viral on social media, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu of Nigeria, at the launch of newly acquired mechanised farming equipment, said his administration was making farming easier and “more sexy” to the youths. I would argue that this is a noble cause, but I would also question whether the conditions are right for sexiness.

    The rapid urbanisation in Nigeria and various parts of Africa has been consuming arable land and green spaces in cities, leaving most of the available land in rural and peri-urban areas. Meanwhile, there has been a significant surge in youth migration to urban areas, driven by the perception that urban areas offer more opportunities. This perception is not unfounded.

    How do you make agriculture “sexy” to young people when the location and conditions for agricultural activities are not “sexy”? The significantly higher infrastructural investments in urban areas translate to more economic and social opportunities, which automatically attract young people. It is one thing to desire to attract young people to agriculture; it is another to make the agricultural areas attractive to them.

    Some of the most important forms of infrastructure to build or improve in rural and peri-urban areas are electricity, transport, health, and internet infrastructure. I will elaborate on electricity and transport infrastructure in this post. Primarily, these forms of infrastructure may incentivise people, including youths, to stay back in these areas to work, start businesses and live. When they stay back, they can contribute to agricultural production and value addition, ultimately improving the economic conditions in these areas and the country as a whole.

    Power is crucial to mechanised agricultural production and value addition. As President Tinubu noted in the same video, traditional forms of agriculture are not attractive, especially to young people. Mechanisation is more likely to attract interest in agriculture. Yet, in many rural and peri-urban areas, there is very limited or no access to electricity. Seeing that the majority of the mechanised processes require the use of electricity, businesses that will be in rural areas will usually have to source their own electricity, and this is mostly very expensive for small and medium-sized businesses. Again, not quite “sexy.”

    Transportation is another major problem in rural and peri-urban areas. As of 2023, it was estimated that 70 per cent of Africa’s rural population lacks access to all-season roads as well as access to affordable and reliable transport services. This means that in many cases, or the majority of cases, transportation of agricultural produce, including value-added produce to markets, which are usually in urban areas, will be problematic. Problems that ensue from this situation are many; some of them include post-harvest losses, undersupply of produce, and discouragement to even start enterprises or businesses in these areas at all.

    This has an adverse impact not just on local markets, that is, within the country, but it also affects the export markets and ultimately affects continental-wide initiatives like the AfCFTA. The AfCFTA seeks to eliminate trade barriers within Africa by boosting ” intra-Africa trade, particularly trade in value-added production and trade across all sectors of Africa’s economy.” It appears, given the explanations I have made above, that a major part of these trade barriers is infrastructure, and more so, transport infrastructure.

    Many of the transportation infrastructure projects prioritised for the AfCFTA at the continental level are the ones that link two, three, or more African countries. See, for instance, the African Development Bank’s projects such as the upgrade of the Lomé-Cotonou road and the planned 1,081-kilometre Abidjan to Lagos highway that will link five African countries. While these projects are laudable, efforts should also be made intentionally to build transport infrastructure that improves rural access. Before products get to these highways, they pass through rural roads first. Therefore, to speed up the actualisation of the AfCFTA, continental stakeholders should partner with governments at all levels (including subnational and local governments where possible) to improve rural transportation access.

    Another potential benefit of rural infrastructure upgrade is the balance of the population. The mass migration from rural to urban areas has led to the overpopulation of urban areas and a sparse population in rural areas. Infrastructure upgrades in rural areas and the opportunities that follow can encourage urban to rural migration and return migration of many rural to urban migrants who are still living in unfavourable conditions and without proper or adequate sources of income.

    Not to forget, what about financing?

    My candid opinion is that most African governments do not have a financing problem; they have a problem with financial management. They have a policy direction problem. Of course, I am very much aware of the overall shrinkage in global development funding. Yet, I still insist that the financial problem in Africa is more of a Public Financial Management (PFM) problem than it is about getting funding.

    The problem already begins to manifest in the tendency to ascribe a ‘financing problem’ in Africa to the shrinking of aid, concessional loans, and external funding in general. It’s time for African governments to pay more attention to generating internal revenue, and as I always say, I do not mean to increase taxes. Governments should seek innovative ways tailored to their specific countries or entities to broaden their tax base and generate more revenue. Many times, the burden of revenue generation in Africa has been unfairly placed on the middle class, whose income is usually traceable. With the growing number of informal workers, policymakers should develop initiatives to include them in the tax base and devise other revenue-generating measures beyond these.

    A country or entity’s budget is one of the significant pointers of its policy direction. I say there is a policy direction problem because I believe that enough attention is not paid to rural infrastructure upgrade in budgets. Yet, the outlook on rural upgrade would change once everything that can be achieved through it comes into perspective.

    What to keep in mind

    Governments and policymakers should co-design infrastructure solutions with members of rural or peri-urban communities. This will help them understand the pain points of members of these communities and how best to solve them.

    Logically, this infrastructure should be climate-resilient, given the current climate crisis. This will help avoid huge infrastructure losses that often result from adverse climate conditions.

    There should not be an overdependence on small and medium-scale enterprises to drive agricultural production and agro-industrialisation in rural areas. I state this caveat given that I have emphasised the role of youths at different points in this post. However, only a few young people have the capital and capacity to scale a small enterprise in the short or medium term. Yet, the kind of economic contribution envisioned from this approach can be achieved more quickly through the participation of large enterprises. As such, large enterprises (preferably mostly local) should also be targeted and incentivised where necessary to participate in driving agri-production and agro-industrialisation in rural areas.

    It is also important to keep informality in mind and plan ahead for it. In many parts of Africa, most small-scale businesses in rural and peri-urban areas operate informally. Therefore, as governments create conditions conducive to businesses in rural areas, they should also develop strategies to integrate these businesses into government systems.

    I strongly believe that there is formality in almost every informality. Government actors must, however, commit to looking for these bits of formality and penetrate through them. I will elaborate on this in my next post.

    Conclusion

    I do not imply that African governments should focus solely on rural infrastructure upgrades, or that rural infrastructure upgrades will solve all of Africa’s problems- I hope I was clear enough about that. What I am certain of, and which I am stating unequivocally through this post, is that rural infrastructure upgrades should be a top policy priority across Africa: East, West, South, and North.

    How “simply put” was that? My goal through this blog is for the everyday African to understand the continent’s development process, become more educated to make informed demands of their governments, and contribute to Africa’s development in their own capacities. Let me know if this post was easy to understand for you.

    I hope you had a good read. Please like, subscribe, and share this with a fellow African or a friend of Africa :). Additionally, please leave a comment below and share your thoughts. Of course, you are welcome to disagree with any of my points. Let’s discuss!

  • Who is writing Africa’s present? Who will write Africa’s future? (2)

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    As I sit behind my computer this evening, I have stepped into the shoes of “an African mother”. The one who is tired of seeing a cycle of mediocrity, the one who wonders, “Is this how this child is going to live his/her life?”

    I’m thinking in my mother tongue, Yoruba, “O ye ki o gbon ju gbogbo eleyi lo. Se aimokan mokan lo n se e ni, abi ago lo n da e laamu?” (You are supposed to be wiser than this. Are you oblivious to the world around you, or are you just plagued with foolishness?)

    How must Africa begin to rewrite her present and future in a figurative context? I promised to write about this in the second part of this post. If you missed the first part, or you want to read through again, you can read it here.

    To get my point across, I will begin with the USAID situation. In late February, the Trump Administration announced that it was cutting 90% of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)’s foreign contracts. This brought a forceful halt to many of the U.S.-funded programs abroad, with both the private and government sectors taking the heat. In Kenya, for instance, the National Treasury Cabinet Secretary “warned” that the USAID cuts will create a KSh 52 billion deficit that will affect key sectors like health, education, and food security in the 2024/2025 fiscal year. Other countries like South Africa, Malawi, Lesotho, and Nigeria have also been dealt a massive blow in the treatment of HIV patients, a service for which they depended heavily on the U.S in the past.

    In the heat of the situation, I picked up a newspaper in Nairobi with a shocking caption. On the front page, it said African governments should build shrines to worship the US in Africa. As I imagine they had hoped to, they got my attention—the attention of the proud, no-African-slander-is-permitted African like me.

    As I read the article, I realized what must have prompted that catchy headline. Splattered across the article’s page were huge amounts of money that the US has donated to Africa over the years, as well as other evidence of how US aid has contributed to crucial aspects of development and public service delivery in many African countries.

    “So?… Did we not know this before?” “But yeah, he has a point….” “Maybe, but not a point strong enough to use such slanderous language as to suggest that African governments should worship the US”. My mind had this brief debate with itself.

    Meanwhile, apart from the United States, countries such as Sweden, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Finland, and the United Kingdom announced bilateral aid cuts in 2024. The European Union has also announced cuts of 2.06 billion USD in overseas aid from 2025 to 2027. It does not take a prophet to realize that the aid ecosystem is being rattled, and that any country or organization that continues to depend on aid is setting itself up for painful disappointments.

    Before I go further, I’d like to introduce you to the premise upon which my thoughts in this post will be based. Indeed, this is the premise upon which many of my thoughts about development (of any society at all) are based.

    People make systems. The structure and output of any system are a product of the inputs of its people.

    You may quote me.

    Why do many countries in Africa still depend on aid?

    Because of my inclination to allude to history, I’m tempted to delete “still” and ask why African countries depend on aid at all. Yet, I will plead that you allow me to skip this for now. It is, on its own, a critical and lengthy topic to which I would gladly dedicate a different post, or a series of posts.

    The issue with aid in Africa is not about whether it has yielded any positive results. Indeed, as the news article author calling for US worship suggests, denying the benefits of foreign aid is impossible if we view things objectively. Areas such as public health, education and human welfare in general have significantly improved in Africa thanks to foreign aid. However, at what cost does this aid come? And why does it not end?

    Mrs Daniels is the lecturer who taught me the course “Evolution of the Contemporary International System and Organization” during my undergraduate studies. I think it was in her class where I first heard the term “soft power“. My curious teenage self found this term very interesting. Actually, almost everything I learned in class then was interesting to me. As I became more and more interested in Africa’s development process, I began to see the role of soft power in keeping many African countries in the status quo.

    “Come, let me give you these crumbs from time to time to get you to do what I think is best, for you and for me. You also have to use what I give you in the way that I think is best. The bulk of whatever I give you will also return to my territory. Procurement, for instance, has to be done mostly from my territory.” Foreign aid is not charity. It is an essential and strategic instrument of soft power for the donor countries.

    I assure you that using the term “crumbs” has no underpinning of ingratitude on my part. Actually, foreign aid usually amounts to less than 1% of the national budget in many of the donor countries. So, many donor countries use so little (at least from their end) to get so much. So much control, power, influence, etc.

    I firmly believe that the same rules that govern regular human interactions also govern the relationships between countries at the highest levels. I must reiterate this because many jargon terms, such as “high-level dialogue” and “diplomacy,” are regularly used, sometimes giving the impression that international relations and foreign policy exist in a different world.

    I also imagined this in the early days of my undergraduate studies. During the holidays, I would often find myself stuck on the Al Jazeera channel, frustrating my brothers, who usually preferred more entertaining channels, as I tried to truly understand how international relations worked differently and what the “hidden rules” that governed the sector were. How wrong I was. International relations is an offshoot of fundamental, regular human affairs.

    Here is an example to drive home my point. To answer the question, “Why do many African countries persistently depend on aid?” Consider the following scenario.

    If you have a family for which you are responsible – children to cater for, a spouse to support, siblings, aged parents, etc.- to what extent would you let an external party continuously take responsibility for their wellbeing? It is understandable when you face financial struggles and need external support for a short time. But wouldn’t it be grossly irresponsible to expect this outsider to care for your dependents indefinitely while you take no active steps towards self-sustenance? What happens when this person changes their mind all of a sudden? What becomes of your dependents when you have outsourced your responsibilities for so long?

    Isn’t this the story of aid dependence in many African countries today?

    To further drive home my point, I will make reference to the scriptures.

    1 Timothy chapter 3, verses 2-7, discusses the qualifications of an “overseer.” Verse 3b states that an overseer “must be free from the love of money (not greedy for wealth and its inherent power—financially ethical).”

    Verse 4 – “he (or she)must manage his (or her) own household”.

    Verse 5 – “(for if a man (or woman) does not know how to manage his (or her) own household, how will he (or she) take care of the church of God?)”

    You may replace “the church of God” with a country, a county, a local government, etc. One problem with many people elected as public officials in Africa is that they have not been adequately vetted to demonstrate their capacity to manage their own affairs. How can we then ascertain their ability to manage a geopolitical entity?

    We do not know whether they are free from the love of money, whether they even understand personal financial management, yet the economy of a whole nation is committed to them. Why won’t they borrow recklessly? Why won’t there be mismanagement and embezzlement of public funds? Why won’t the government commit budgetary blunders?

    Crucial, commonsensical points painted irrelevant by politics.

    Speaking of borrowing, I will now turn to briefly discuss the debt issue in Africa.

    What about debt?

    In March, I attended the Public Financial Management (PFM) Village Program, hosted by Budget Talk Global and Bajeti Hub— a CSO working to advance transparency and equity in budgeting processes in Kenya —at the People’s Dialogue Festival in Nairobi. During the Question and Answer session, a woman representing one of the counties stood up to ask a question. She said that under normal circumstances, when a person cannot repay a loan, you do not continue to lend them more money. At least, you let them pay what they owe before they are given another loan. So she asked, Why does Kenya keep getting more loans when it has been unable to pay off its existing loans?

    It mattered that this woman asked this question. She was probably trying to understand why it was so difficult to apply common sense in this situation. Why do highly indebted countries continue to get more loans, especially when there are no development outcomes to show for such loans? Perhaps, the conditions are a bit different when it comes to commercial loans, but what about organizations like the International Monetary Fund (IMF)? Why do they fail to properly audit how countries use loans and take necessary actions thereafter?

    It is also important to discuss loan conditionalities. Organisations or countries that lend money usually have a set of conditions (in the form of policies) that are supposed to ensure that countries that borrow money can overcome the troubles that led them to seek loans in the first place. In the case of the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) like the IMF, the trend in the policies (conditionalities) they recommend is worrisome. With the IMF, in many cases, the policies are usually heavily based on austerity measures– “tax the people more, and reduce government spending”. This is a recipe for disaster without properly contextualizing each country’s situation. The fancy term for such an approach is “the global policy approach”, the not-so-fancy term is called “the one-size-fits-all approach”. In another post, I will elaborate on these issues.

    Loans are not bad in themselves. Debt, really, is not a big deal. At the micro level, individuals and businesses borrow money and resources to meet a particular need or to drive growth. At the macro level, countries in every region of the world borrow money. Some of the chief lenders to Africa are debtors themselves. The important questions to ask are, what are the loans borrowed by African countries used for? Are they being used for ghost projects? Are they being used to service existing loans? What are the conditions attached to these loans?

    Debt is not the enemy; unsustainable debt is the enemy of Africa’s development.

    How to rewrite Africa’s present and future

    Africa’s present and future cannot be rewritten without funding. Development has to be financed, and he or she who pays the piper dictates the tune. African governments must focus on generating the right type of financing without jeopardizing their sovereignty and duties to their people. More attention should be paid to effectively generating internal revenue, and I am not just talking about taxation. What about effective governance of natural resources? What about value-added exports?

    Importantly, rewriting Africa’s present and future will not come simply by ‘sloganism’, or noisemaking (with due respect to the purposeful noisemakers). It requires targeted, strategic, and steady institutional overhauling. It requires having the right people with the right vision, motives, and, importantly, people with strength of character. People who understand Africa’s problems and what is at stake. People who have the required intelligence and foresight to draft workable solutions, and who will recruit the right people and the right resources to execute them.

    Africa needs leaders. People who have not yet been able to lead themselves have no business leading Africa, at whichever level. Africa’s problems are too numerous, and the continent requires solutions too urgently to take such a gamble.

    The views expressed in this post are mine. I have chosen this unconventional method of writing and explaining Africa’s development process to make this information accessible to a larger audience outside the development sector. My goal is that the everyday African can understand the continent’s development process, be more educated to make demands from their governments, and contribute to the development process of Africa themselves.

    I hope you had a good read. Please leave a comment below and let me know what you think. Of course, you are welcome to disagree with any of my points. Let’s discuss!

  • Who is writing Africa’s present? Who will write Africa’s future?

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    It was a cold afternoon in Mainz, Germany. I stared hard at my computer, thinking of the assignment I had to submit in a few days. This was not a regular academic term paper; it was a policy note, a 4-page policy note. It’s supposed to be straight to the point. I had figured out what I would write about but I didn’t understand why I hesitated to start.

    My topic was also interesting. It was a policy note advising the Government of South Sudan on attracting investment in climate-resilient infrastructure. It was interesting because South Sudan is a unique case. It is Africa’s youngest country (it gained independence in 2011), has a history of instability and conflict, and has an almost 80% rural population. No doubt, this is a challenging investment climate. The task I had was, therefore, to look for opportunities in this situation and how the government can leverage them.

    Again, this is an interesting topic. So, why was I hesitant? I don’t know, really.

    When I started writing, I saw something that made me pause. I took a long pause. My second in-text citation stood out: “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Netherlands, 20…”

    In the first paragraph, I was explaining the climate change situation in South Sudan. For this, I needed data on the impact of climate change on the country so far, and I searched- I truly searched.

    I searched for something from the country—something ‘original’. As an African Studies student, I am usually conscious of my sources. I try to decolonize knowledge in my own little way. The most ‘original’ documents I found were African Development Bank (AfDB) documents. Really, thank you, AfDB.

    I searched because I definitely don’t want to write a policy note for the government of an African country and cite what a government parastatal of another country had to say about it. Of course, foreign sources are not prohibited, but this one did not look good. This brings me to the question I asked in the title of this post.

    My Bachelor’s degree was in History and International Studies, so believe me when I say I have read and heard how some non-Africans who wrote about Africa distorted its history. It was in one of my first undergraduate classes that I learnt about Hugh Trevor-Roper’s famous infamous 1963 quote

    Perhaps in the future, there will be some African history to teach. But at present there is none, or very little: there is only the history of Europeans in Africa. The rest is largely darkness, like the history of pre-European, pre-Columbian America. And darkness is not a subject for history.

    I will not dedicate time and space to ranting about why a statement like this saw the light of the day, and in 1963, for that matter. You can take a moment to rant before you continue reading.

    I would understand.

    So, agreed, the unfortunate situation where foreigners bastardized Africa’s history happened. Thankfully, African historians are now rewriting African history as it ought to be. However, it is expected that Africans should (I would say must, at the risk of sounding imposing) also take the initiative to write their own present and future.

    By ‘writing’, I mean in both literal and figurative contexts. Literally speaking, Africans should write about what should work for Africa. Africans should conduct scientific research for the purpose of Africa in the context of Africa. Africans should conduct other forms of research for their countries within the context of their countries’ realities. Africans should make policies for Africa in the context of Africa. Africans should publish up-to-date, comprehensive data about Africa.

    When I speak of Africans writing about Africa’s present and future, I do not mean ‘Ige Ajanlekoko’ at ‘Arnold McDonalds University” or ‘Wamahiu Diallo’ at ‘Jerry Schmidt Institute of Development’. I mean ‘Naa Kapeni’ at Fourah Bay College and ‘Getachew Lumumba’ at Université Cheikh Anta Diop, etc. I know this is a tricky one, because you may guess who Omolewa Shobogun is, currently at the University of Bayreuth.

    Recently, there have been debates about the possibility of emerging (democratic) developmental states in Africa. However, I have serious doubts about their viability for now. From Singapore to Japan, South Korea, and China, research and development (R&D) has been and continues to be a major priority of the Asian developmental states. Meanwhile, many African governments still struggle to dedicate up to 1% of their GDP to R&D. There is also very limited collaboration with the private sector (R&D collaboration with the private sector was a prominent strategy in many of the Asian developmental states).

    The resulting situation is not hard to see: Many brilliant and innovative scholars and researchers turn to international bodies for funding. With international funding, there are two popular scenarios. The most popular one is the ‘japa’ scenario. In this scenario, a scholar or researcher receives funding and relocates to another country outside of Africa. The more these scholars stay outside Africa, the more detached their opinions will be. Then, it is only a matter of time before their opinions, solutions, and advisory become that of an outsider, lacking in context and missing on-the-ground practicalities.

    The second scenario concerns the piper, the tune, and the one who pays. Whether or not the researcher or scholar stays back in Africa, the external funder determines the research regulations. And in many cases, it’s not just the same. It is not the same as what it would have been if the funding came from a local source. In many cases, the result is still published with the name of the funder, which brings us back to the frustration I shared at the beginning of this post.

    It is important to know that the present will eventually become an element of both the past and the future. What and how Africa is doing now will soon be called “history” and it will also determine the future. It is a matter of time before we begin to see the effect of this brain drain and the effect of the names (of organizations) under which these works are published.

    I hope it does not turn out that history repeats itself.

    Quite frankly, hope does only a little. Proper planning and action are more beneficial in this case.

    In my next post, I will write on the figurative contexts in which Africa must begin to write her present and future.

    Thank you!

    P.S: I aim to ensure that everyone reading my posts can easily understand Africa’s development process and improve their knowledge significantly. Please leave a comment to let me know if you found this easy to read and understand. Kindly suggest ways I can improve too.

    This post does not attempt to oversimplify the diverse experiences of different African countries/societies. ‘Africa’ is repeatedly used in this context to convey a message that the author believes affects most African countries.