Africa – United only in self-destruction

When I was a little younger and more inclined to see the best in everything, I spent a good 2 or 3 weeks in a state of palpable excitement when an announcement was made in 2016. Chadian president Idris Deby and Rwandan president Paul Kagame stood side by side at the 27th Ordinary Session of the African Union holding a small red booklet. The long-awaited AU passport was finally here and I was part of the African generation that would finally know what it means to be conceptually “African.”

Culturally, economically, recreationally – this was going to be the game-changer. There were smiles all round as the implementation timetable was announced. Issuance to the general public would begin in 2018, they said. By 2020, x number of African travellers were expected to use the AU passport every year to transact business across borders and travel seamlessly. After decades, perhaps centuries of the idea of Pan-Africanism being limited to an intellectual exercise dominated by the names of long-dead people, finally Africa was about to open up to itself.

So naturally, no such thing happened. 4 years later, the AU passport, like the rest of the “Agenda 2063” mission of the AU remains fully rhetorical. A Tanzanian buddy of mine informed me that his sister has one of the gorgeous red things. I mean she’s a high ranking diplomat in the AU, so technically she doesn’t count as part of its issuance statistics, but at least it exists hey? I hear Aliko Dangote also has one, which must be nice. Apparently, you need to be a high ranking AU official to have this passport, in which case you probably didn’t need it anyway. That or you just need to be Africa’s richest person.

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So just the $8.1 billion per passport then. I mean I’d easily pay this amount for the passport if only they had it in flying cockroach brown…

It is no coincidence that Dubai’s visa process is so streamlined and optimised for ease. The leaders of Dubai want you to go there and spend your money. Every transaction you make there puts some money in the city’s coffers

Africa is a very unserious continent

I do not have the statistics to support this claim, but based on my personal network and anecdotal encounters, I am willing to bet that there are a large number of Africans with a net monthly disposable income in excess of $1,000 who can retain this income despite physical relocation. I am talking about people who participate in the digital economy. Freelancers of all kinds. Graphic designers. Programmers. Journalists. Musicians. Artists. Consultants. Accountants. You name it – the productive capacity does in fact exist here. The problem of course, is that very few if any African cities offer these high income earners the standard of living that could motivate them to stay and build instead of emigrating to Canada and Australia.

In case the solution to this problem was not obvious, there is the world’s biggest example of such a solution sitting just a few hundred kilometres northeast of Africa – Dubai. Dubai’s leaders observed a similar problem in South Asia and built a world-class city specifically designed to attract and retain the best South Asian talent, who brought their skills and high incomes with them. Without even levying an income tax (Dubai levies only a basic sales tax and a small business tax), Dubai thus built a $405bn economic juggernaut in which oil now contributes only less than 1 percent of GDP.

It is no coincidence that Dubai’s visa process is so streamlined and optimised for ease. The leaders of Dubai want you to go there and spend your money. Every transaction you make there puts some money in the city’s coffers. They want you to spend as much time there as possible because the city’s self-selecting economic nature makes it such that if you are there, that means you either have a productive job or money to spend. It is not that the Emiratis like foreigners or outsiders – it is that they are wise enough to understand how to extract value from them and keep them coming back for more. I mean I would know because I am one of said Dubai junkies.

In this column, I have mentioned before that countries like Equatorial Guinea are excellently positioned to give Africa’s top talent its own “Dubai” ecosystem. In that article however, I also mentioned that I expected absolutely nothing from the likes of Teodoro Obiang and his family rulership enterprise because people like that are not wired to think big. This unfortunately applies to the rest of the continent too – from the big-for-nothing sexagenarians in the western corner to the existentially confused countries in the central, eastern and southern areas. Africa has no understanding whatsoever of the value of aggregation in building an economy, or how ease of movement aids certain especially beneficial types of aggregation.

Wanna live in Ghana? That’ll be $2,000, please

Say an independent journalist whom we shall refer to as David Hundeyin were to decide to relocate from Nigeria to a quieter part of the continent and his heart settled on Ghana, one of his childhood stomping grounds, that shouldn’t be too hard right? Well actually, yes. It is. Very hard, actually.

First there is the COVID-19 test before boarding a flight from Lagos. That’s about $120. Then there is the flight to Accra, which now costs up to a scarcely-believable $450. Then there is the post-flight COVID-19 test which will set our hero back by $150. Then there is the modest Airbnb which takes another $400 for 30 days. We’re well past $1,000 already, which is basically half of Nigeria’s per capita GDP but we’re just getting started.

Want to open a bank account old chap? In addition to eleventy documents and a couple of DNA samples from your grandma’s grave, you’re also going to need a residence permit. Why do you, an ECOWAS citizen, need a residence permit in another ECOWAS country, you say? Well because…you know, you can pay for it. African countries don’t see well heeled, upwardly mobile, footloose digital nomads as prized domiciles who bring in vast amounts of forex and also boost the local economy. They see you as simply cash cows to be exploited and gouged once.

I say once because after the bad experience you’ll probably never be back again and you’ll be off to more serious places – like Dubai for example. But that’s fine by them. They only need to catch you once anyway. Anyway, where was I? Yes, the residence permit. So the thing about that is you don’t just need to get a residence permit old chap. You also need to get a health assessment, which is basically some bloke filling a sheet of paper to say that they did a bunch of tests on you that they never did. That sheet of paper will cost you $180. Then you’ll need a “non-citizen ID card”.

That will cost you $120. If you can’t see why the residence permit and the ID card have to be separate, then join the club. By the way, the residence permit will set you back another $800 my friend. So when you total everything up, you’re already down $2,000 before you have even started living in Ghana.

Enjoy your stay my friend!