Angelo Fick asks. Is It Ethical to Be Rich In Africa?

Think Business: Is It Ethical to Be Rich In Africa?

By Angelo Fick
Wealth: both a condition aspired to  by billions and the  source  of   much trouble on Earth. This  is  particularly important to remember on  a continent like Africa.  The resources  of  this  continent  contributed significantly to  the   enriching of  others elsewhere. Without  the   exploitation  of Africa’s  material resources,  much of  the  growth of the  West  after  the  14th century would be  unthinkable; this  included raw materials both vegetable and mineral; but  most  traumatically, it   included  human beings whose enslavement on plantations for cotton and sugar fuelled the  economic growth   which   marked  European  and North American modernity.

Contemporary Africans live on  a continent marked by  spectacular inequality. In  a few confined spaces  in  some of  our major cities  you  may  experience the  comfort  of first  world standards: five-star hotels,  air conditioning, top  restaurants and shopping centres where stores charge dollar and euro equivalent prices  for  mostly  imported  goods. But  the   majority of Africans live  outside these spaces  where the  political and economic elites  socialise and work, networking among themselves and with the  politically and economically powerful from elsewhere.
The   spectacular wealth  (mostly un-imaginable to the majority of people on  the  African continent) of the  few billionaires and their millionaire associates is often  celebrated as an achievement for Africa in  the  mass media. Such praise for the achievements of the  few are attempts to  countermand the  image of  Africa as nothing but a space of deprivation, poverty,  and failure (economic, political, social,  and cultural) which have dominated western representations of the  continent.
These   celebrations of  wealth and those who produce and possess  it are  therefore reactive,  always already  determined  by the  images of Africans created by  outsiders,  and sometimes internalised by  Africans  themselves. The  prominent  Kenyan writer  Ngugi   wa  Thiong’O coined the term ‘colonial alienation’ to describe this: understanding the  local  to be inferior because   it  is  not only not  the   distant, but  is  judged to  be  inferior to  the  distant by people who have never been there.
However,  millions  of Africans who have  never been  to  Europe or  America can  now judge their surroundings against images of  those distant places   that are beamed into their homes via  television or  through the  internet, often on  public and state broadcasters in  their postcolonial  states. And  when success is figured in terms imitative of those distant spaces  as they are  figured in  glossy  magazines and television programming, it is understandable  how the  idea  of wealth in  economic terms comes  to  be  seen  as a status to  aspire  to.
As Africans are  asked  to  celebrate the  first   African billionaire,  and  then  the  first  African woman billionaire, they are not asked   to  investigate  the   ethics  behind how the   individuals thus elevated made that money. The stories of their “triumph” over  adversity (the  state of Africanity, the  fact  of  being African, is seen  as both an  impediment to their ambition and an  essential component of their success;  the  paradox is seldom interrogated) ironically  refigures the   tropes  of   western   European modernity,  in  which full humanity   is  expressed  by  the   subject’s ability  to  rise  above ‘Nature’ and tame it,  or  subject the   body to  the   discipline of the mind. It was by these very tropes that Europeans justified for centuries the enslavement of  Africans; it  was  through these ideas that Africa could be colonised and misruled.
What is often missing from the  celebration of  individuals’ wealth (and there is no  denying that it is indeed an  achievement to  amass  individual wealth of such spectacular proportions given the  real  impediments to  success   even elite   Africans face in a racist world order skewed against them) is an  account of the  intimate connection  between  such  wealth  and  the  troubled textures of life for the  majority of Africans. In the  major economies of Africa– Nigeria, South Africa,  Kenya, Egypt,  and Angola, among others – the  achievements of the  few are either figured as ‘inspiration’ for  the  many,  or  as proof positive of ‘the system’ working. If we  can  have millionaires  and billionaires in  Africa,  Africa  (or whatever part of it stands in for the  whole in such views)  cannot be doing too  badly. If they can make it, anyone can.  This is, of course, a crude version of the “American dream”, which is now being peddled as an “African dream”. But in such dreams, the realities are ignored and erased.
Wealth requires debt, after all, and debt ensured pauperisation. To enrich oneself, one has to exploit some advantage,   whether   natural or political. Too often the political advantage is refigured as a natural advantage. This is not unique to Africa; it is how European and North American wealth was and continues to be made. What is different in Africa is the vast inequality in which this reordering takes place.
No  one  can  any  longer sketch a pre- colonial Africa of utopian peace and prosperity, but  in  the  complex economic and political  relations prior to  colonisation, Africans also  developed varieties of  ethical  belief  systems. The  vestiges of  those survive despite  colonisation and the  implementation of beliefs  and thought-systems from elsewhere over  many centuries– Islam, Christianity, capitalism, Marxism, socialism – and continue to  form part of many people’s everyday  realities on  the  continent.   This  is   acknowledged  even among the  powerful capitalist elites:  the  import of ‘African  thought’ into business practice, whether in public relations or in sincere attempts to transform the  unequal relationship  between  African “big   business” and their international, mostly Euro-American partners, or  whether to  address specific  local markets and audiences.
But when 345  million people in  Africa  do  not have adequate access  to  clean drinking water, infant mortality rates  remain  unacceptably high, and wars and political instability continue to shape the lives  of millions across  the  continent, we cannot  explain away   these problems as the  consequence of colonialism past, imperialism present, or the  corrupt relationships between some local elites  and global elites;  we must also relate this  to our  very celebration of the  local elites  as models.
In  that  respect Africans are  no   different  from  the   rest   of  the   billions  of humans on  the   planet: our  amassing of wealth speaks to a deep, existential crisis, our  attempt to  keep  the   chaos and unpredictability of  everyday life  at  bay,  to appease our  anxieties about what the  uncertain future, and to have the  over-security  of material wealth against the  gaping chaos of unknown tomorrows. Of course, the  very  system by  which we secure that material wealth in  the   modern  world – speculative trade in  a financialised economy, and complex debt restructuring and lending  mechanisms  which  have  very complicated relationships with the  trade in  actual commodities  –  also  secures the  poverty and  deprivation  against which our  wealth is supposed to  secure us.  And thus the spiral begins.
In a world of finite resources, their unequal distribution is not a ‘natural order’ but a highly social and socially engineered way of living. For many Africans – who historically lived  in smaller, localised communities  –  the   inequality  we  now observe in  our  major cities, and between the cities and the country, and then be- tween the  few and the  many, would have been untenable and certainly unthinkable in the  past. There are many fables and cautionary tales told by griots about such outrages and the systemic failures they represent. It is not that wealth was not celebrated but the spectacular inequality of our present is only palatable in urban settings. In villages, the intimate human relationships would make that kind of distribution of resources unsustainable.
The    vestiges  of   pre-colonial  belief  systems and their imbrication into post-  colonial  African social   and political organisation, give  many of us in  Africa  the  advantage  of  questioning  exactly what the  cost  of individual spectacular wealth amid  mass   deprivation  and  poverty is, and could be. Such beliefs also require us to think critically about the human cost of our self-actualisation, which   would need a clear understanding of the long chain of events between cause and effect. We should not only be dazzled by the wealth of individuals, such that we celebrate it as a collective achievement. We should also ask what happens to the many human beings – millions of them, many our fellow Africans – along the way from point of origin to point of delivery of that wealth. Once we have understood that relationship between wealth and deprivation, that intimate connection between taking finite resources and storing them away from the many and for use by the few, we need to ask ourselves what condition of humanity results. And then we need to ask ourselves how long such a system can be sustained. The historical record is instructive on this – look at feudal societies and how, eventually, the few with much had to give way to the many with little. Celebrating individual wealth amid mass destitution is not unique to Africa but Africans need not prove their equality in inhumanity.

About the Author
Angelo Fick is a resident current affairs and news analyst at eNCA. He has 20 years of experience teaching and researching across a variety of disciplines at universities in South Africa and Europe