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FACT QUESTION 10
Worldwide, 30-year-old men have spent 10 years in school, on average. How many
years have women of the same age spent in school?
A: 9 years
B: 6 years
C: 3 years
By now I hope you have worked out that the safest thing to do in this book
is to pick the most positive answer. Thirty-year-old women have on average
spent nine years in school, just one year less than the men.
Many of my fellow Europeans have a snobbish self-regard built on an
illusion of a European culture that is superior, not only to African and Asian
cultures, but also to American consumer culture. When it comes to drama,
though, I wonder who consumes the most. Twenty-six percent of the US
public picked the right answer, compared with 13 percent in Spain and
Belgium, 10 percent in Finland, and just 8 percent in Norway.
The question is about gender inequality, which is currently discussed in the
Scandinavian media on a daily basis. We see constant examples of the brutal
violence committed against women out there, mostly elsewhere, in the rest of
the world, as well as reports from places like Afghanistan, where many, many
girls are out of school. These images confirm a popular idea in Scandinavia
that gender equality elsewhere has not improved—that most other cultures are
stuck.
How the Rocks Move
Cultures, nations, religions, and people are not rocks. They are in constant
transformation.
Africa Can Catch Up
The idea that Africa is destined to remain poor is very common but often
seems to be based on no more than a feeling. If you like your opinions to be
based on facts, this is what you need to know.
Yes, Africa is lagging behind other continents, on average. The average
lifespan of a newborn baby in Africa today is 65 years. That’s a staggering
17 years less than a baby born today in Western Europe.
But, first of all, you know how misleading averages can be, and the
differences within Africa are immense. Not all African countries are lagging
the world. Five large African countries—Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Libya,
and Egypt—have life expectancies above the world average of 72 years. They
are where Sweden was in 1970.
Those despairing for Africa may not be convinced by this example. They
may say that these are all Arab countries on the north coast of Africa and
therefore not the Africa they had in mind. When I was young, these countries
were certainly seen as sharing Africa’s destiny. It is only since they made
progress that they have been held to be exceptional. For the sake of argument,
though, let’s put these North African countries to one side and look at Africa
south of the Sahara.
In the last 60 years the African countries south of the Sahara almost all
went from being colonies to being independent states. Over that time, these
countries expanded their education, electricity, water, and sanitation
infrastructures at the same steady speed as that achieved by the countries of
Europe when they went through their own miracles. And each of the 50
countries south of the Sahara reduced its child mortality faster than Sweden
ever did. How can that not be counted as incredible progress?
Perhaps because though things are much better, they are still bad. If you
look for poor people in Africa, of course you will find them.
But there was extreme poverty in Sweden 90 years ago too. And when I
was young, just 50 years ago, China, India, and South Korea were all way
behind where sub-Saharan Africa is today in most ways, and Asia’s destiny
was supposed then to be exactly what Africa’s destiny is supposed to be now:
“They will never be able to feed 4 billion people.”
Roughly half a billion people in Africa today are stuck in extreme poverty.
If it is their destiny to stay that way, then there must be something unique
about this particular group of poor people compared with the billions across
the world, including in Africa, who have already escaped extreme poverty. I
don’t think there is.
I think the last to leave extreme poverty will be the poorest farmers stuck
on really low-yield soils and surrounded by or close to conflicts. That
probably accounts today for 200 million people, just over half of whom live
in Africa. For sure they have an extraordinarily difficult time ahead of them—
not because of their unchanging and unchangeable culture, but because of the
soil and the conflicts.
But I hold out hope even for these poorest and most unfortunate people in
the world, because this is exactly how hopeless extreme poverty has always
seemed. During their terrible famines and conflicts, progress in China,
Bangladesh, and Vietnam seemed impossible. Today these countries probably
produced most of the clothes in your wardrobe. Thirty-five years ago, India
was where Mozambique is today. It is fully possible that within 30 years
Mozambique will transform itself, as India has done, into a country on Level
2 and a reliable trade partner. Mozambique has a long, beautiful coast on the
Indian Ocean, the future center of global trade. Why should it not prosper?
Nobody can predict the future with 100 percent certainty. I’m not
convinced it will happen. But I am a possibilist and these facts convince me:
it is possible.
The destiny instinct makes it difficult for us to accept that Africa can catch
up with the West. Africa’s progress, if it is noticed at all, is seen as an
improbable stroke of good fortune, a temporary break from its impoverished
and war-torn destiny.
The same destiny instinct also seems to make us take continuing Western
progress for granted, with the West’s current economic stagnation portrayed
as a temporary accident from which it will soon recover. For years after the
global crash of 2008, the International Monetary Fund continued to forecast
3 percent annual economic growth for countries on Level 4. Each year, for
five years, countries on Level 4 failed to meet this forecast. Each year, for
five years, the IMF said, “Next year it will get back on track.” Finally, the
IMF realized that there was no “normal” to go back to, and it downgraded its
future growth expectations to 2 percent. At the same time the IMF
acknowledged that the fast growth (above 5 percent) during those years had
instead happened in countries on Level 2, like Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and
Kenya in Africa, and Bangladesh in Asia.
Why does this matter? One reason is this: the IMF forecasters’ worldview
had a strong influence on where your retirement funds were invested.
Countries in Europe and North America were expected to experience fast and
reliable growth, which made them attractive to investors. When these
forecasts turned out to be wrong, and when these countries did not in fact
grow fast, the retirement funds did not grow either. Supposedly low-risk/high-
return countries turned out to be high-risk/low-return countries. And at the
same time African countries with great growth potential were being starved of
investment.
Another reason it matters, if you work for a company based in the old
“West,” is that you are probably missing opportunities in the largest
expansion of the middle-income consumer market in history, which is taking
place right now in Africa and Asia. Other, local brands are already
establishing a foothold, gaining brand recognition, and spreading throughout
these continents, while you are still waking up to what is going on. The
Western consumer market was just a teaser for what is coming next.
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