Overlooking Africa as part of America’s economic recovery would be a mistake

October 19, 2012 – The next president of the United States, whether Mitt Romney or Barack Obama, will likely be faced with a financial challenge unlike any faced by his predecessors, including Franklin D. Roosevelt. He will stand at the precipice of the fiscal cliff and perhaps shudder as he looks at the abyss below, darkened in its depths. Soon thereafter the American people as well as those around the globe will begin to know what he really plans economically to help fill this particular pit of the economic Inferno.

In so doing, it will be easy for the president to overlook Africa as an important part of the economic recovery and that would be a tragic mistake, not so much for Africa as much as for the United States. Africa, as a whole of 54 nations, is growing far more self-confident in its future at time when the global power centers of Europe, North America, and East Asia—especially Japan—are far less confident of the future. Many of the nations of Africa should be more confident. Their economies are growing faster than anywhere else in the world, and investors around the world are showing keen interest in most nations in Africa as investment destinations. The continent is one of the two last economic frontiers. (Central Asia is the other, but who wants to invest in the ‘stans’ amongst the war lords, irrationality, hatred, and prejudice of 14th century attitudes?) More…