GREEN EXPORERS IN AFRICA

In the future investors will need to be explorers - HSBC,  'In the future' advertising campaign, 2012.

This blog is the beginning of an exploration of Africa's 54 green economies. It starts with an Urgent Call to Green Action. It looks at Africa’s position at the forthcoming United Nation’s Rio+20 ‘Earth Summit’ on 20-22 June. In support of Africa’s voice at Rio it hopes to raise awareness of the continent’s green economic growth potential, to outline the tremendous opportunities and to generate interest in the global importance of investing in Africa’s green economies.

The material for this blog has been gathered over many years, but it has been assembled in this form in a very short time. Due to time and space constraints the blog does not include many statistics or references. Over the coming weeks these will be added as 'links'. In order to arrive at a simple understanding of such a complex subject, the blog is presented in several stages or 'posts' which will hopefully lead to green action.

First is an Urgent Call to Green Action: Rio+20+Africa. The Call tries to show how investing in Africa’s green economies is vital to the rebalancing of the global economy. It also includes proposals for a draft green investment plan focussed on Africa's river basins as natural designations for assessing green growth potential.  Hopefully ready for Rio+20, the draft plan would be made up of 54 green investment blogs covering one river basin for each country built by 'green explorers' in Africa through web-based research tools.

Next is An Immensely Rich Cosmos, an essay on the subject looking more widely at the current situation in Africa, the short and long-term challenges and the possible green solutions including an unofficial, draft green investment plan assembled in time for Rio.

For readers who want to go further into the enquiry, hopefully join the conversation and make positive contributions, the next stage of the blog comprises five ‘original posts’. These five posts are the blog’s first green footsteps into Africa and explain its purpose in more detail:

1.  Africa: first green frontier (or last brown)

2. Africa’s Voice at Rio+20  

3. A draft green investment plan
 

4. Institutional frameworks  

5. Africa’s 3^rd era of hope: globalisation on trial 

(At the end of post 5 I include a fuller personal profile which covers Africa's 3 eras of hope.)

Depending on the response to this call for green action, over the remaining days before Rio+20 the blog hopes to coordinate the green explorers’ findings. Post number 3, a draft green investment plan, outlines 7 green investment categories to explore. Ideas on how to begin the exploration will be provided to respondents and will be updated regularly. It begins with a green conversation....

URGENT CALL TO GREEN ACTION: RIO+20+AFRICA

The fate of us all is bound up with Africa - Alexander Campbell, The Heart of Africa, 1954 

Man everywhere needs Africa - G.E.W. Wolstenholm, Man and Africa, 1965

Just as Africa needs the world, the world needs Africa - Gordon Brown, former UK prime minister, AU Summit, Kampala, July 2010. 

Contents

INTRODUCTION

IS AFRICA READY?

CALL TO GREEN ACTION - ONLY DAYS BEFORE 'THE FUTURE YOU WANT;

INTRODUCTION

With only days before the Rio+20 Summit, Africa and the world may miss a historic opportunity. The emerging key challenges of the Summit are how to ‘green’ the global economy to save the world from converging crises, and to get world leaders to agree on a set of Sustainable Development Goals. But as the Summit draws near there is scepticism about whether it will deliver the necessary breakthroughs. There are calls for more courage and vision. The WWF has warned that the Summit could collapse if ‘countries fail to agree on a draft text for sustainable development goals and definition of key objectives including green economy.’ This critical Summit coincides with the rise of Africa, last frontier for investment and a beacon of hope for sustainable growth.

Success at Rio matters most to Africa which has most to gain and most to lose. But there have been questions surrounding what Africa wants from the Summit and what the green economy means for Africa’s development. This matters greatly because Rio+20 is a unique opportunity for Africa, the greenest continent with the youngest populations and growing fast, to take the lead in the green economy. With the world in turmoil, Africa is the new engine of growth with the potential to play a pivotal role in expanding the global green economy. After 20 years’ sustainable development experience Africa is well qualified to provide the courage and vision needed at Rio.

Africa may never again be in such an advantageous position. But time is short with only days to go before the Summit. For this reason I have prepared the attached Urgent Call to Green Action: Rio+20+Africa to which I hope you can respond with positive feedback and suggestions.

Africa’s influence at Rio is a crucial story that is not being told. With your influence and networks that story can be told and can spread. Please forward the file attached to anyone who might be interested in exploring the green economy in Africa.

Ex Africa semper aliquid novi – Out of Africa always something new.

IS AFRICA READY?

As the Rio+20 Summit approaches there are calls for more courage and vision to avoid squandering a historic opportunity to plan for a sustainable future. Set against a backdrop of escalating global crises, the ‘greening’  of the global economy as the only viable route to sustainability is where courage and vision are needed most.

The Summit also coincides with the rise of Africa, the last frontier for investment, new engine of global growth, where the high-carbon, resource-intensive ‘brown’ economy is least developed, and where expanding the green economy can be easier, faster and cheaper than anywhere else.  However, there are signs that Africa could become the last frontier for brown investment when it can become the first frontier for green.

In 20 years since the first Rio Summit, Africa has been building green foundations for a green economy. Today, with its huge untapped resources and promising growth forecasts, Africa is well-positioned at Rio to present its green credentials, forge its green identity and take the lead in the global green economy.

But is Africa ready? There is a danger that this historic opportunity may be lost without more concrete strategies and plans, which Africa is well-qualified to propose. Using web-based research tools there is still time before Rio for ‘green explorers’ in Africa to assemble draft green investment plans that can demonstrate the continent’s huge green growth potential.

After 50 years of independence and industrial experience (green and brown) Africa can show how green investment in this vast continent of 1 billion people can play a pivotal role in rebalancing the global economy. Rio+20 is a unique opportunity for Africa, the greenest continent with the youngest populations and growing fast, to speak with one voice with the courage and vision needed to accelerate the journey towards a global green economy.

It is difficult to overstate the importance of investing in the green continent. If Africa continues to attract brown investment at the current rate the development clock could be turned back decades. The hidden costs of the brown economy in Africa are now well known, there are more of them and they are increasing as the planet heats up, populations soar and eco-systems break down. If the finance and energy of the brown economy in Africa is not directed onto greener paths, in a matter of decades the continent could be stripped bare of resources and totally deforested with vast areas uninhabitable for an estimated 2 billion people or more.   

CALL TO GREEN ACTION - ONLY DAYS BEFORE THE FUTURE YOU WANT

  
Africa’s growth story is remarkable in its timing to play a key role in rebalancing the global economy. In 50 years since independence, Africa has experienced hope followed by disillusion, decline, stagnation and finally in the last decade long-awaited growth. By 2008, just before the crash, the ‘forgotten continent’ had become the ‘last frontier for investment’. Africa’s rapid rebound from the Great Recession in 2010 was the first sign of economic independence from the western powers. Two years later, with the rest of the world in turmoil and worse case scenarios never far away, Africa stands out as beacon of hope. With the historic Rio+20 “Earth Summit” approaching fast, Africa as a green field for investment is in a unique position to promote itself as a driver of sustainable growth.

Key themes of the United Nations Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development on 20-22 June are the green economy and the institutional frameworks for sustainable development and poverty eradication. During the Conference it is hoped that the international community will agree on a set of Sustainable Development Goals, appoint a global ‘high commissioner’ for the environment and elevate the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) to Organisation status equal to WTO or WHO. 

This once-in-a-generation event takes place against a backdrop of mounting economic, financial, environmental, social and security crises, including food, water and energy. This 21^st century Earth Summit is therefore critical. Exploring ways for ‘greening’ the global economy has emerged as the key challenge of the Summit.

The global green economy is one of the most controversial issues of the day. Some see it as a luxury in our economically troubled times. Others say it is an opportunistic manipulation by global capitalism to ‘monetise’ and control the planet’s dwindling resources to keep the poor down. Yet more and more see the evolving green economy as the planet’s last hope, the only viable route to a sustainable future.

Its opposite, the dominant, high-carbon, resource-intensive, ‘brown’ economy, with its escalating ‘hidden costs’ - from inequality to climate change - has reached a point of diminishing returns. With the world in turmoil it is becoming increasingly clear that a rapid and sustained expansion of the global green economy is essential if we are to avoid creating a ‘perfect storm’ of converging crises expected to strike by the time of Rio+40.

The historic Summit also coincides with the rise of Africa, the last frontier for investment and new engine for global growth, where the expansion of the green economy can be easier, quicker and cheaper than in the more developed brown economies of the industrial and emerging countries. However, there are strong signs that Africa risks becoming the last frontier for ‘brown’ investment, or business-as-usual, when it would be in everybody’s long-term interest if it became the first frontier for green. Africa’s hopes have been shattered before and the current boom is in danger of turning back the clock. The hidden costs of ‘brown’ development in Africa are now well known, there are more of them and they are increasing as the planet heats up, populations increase and eco-systems break down. Inequality, one of the most glaring hidden costs, is already causing huge swathes of unrest across the continent.

There is also scepticism about whether Rio+20 will deliver the necessary breakthroughs to make the event a success. Some say the Summit needs more courage and vision to avoid a historic opportunity being squandered. There also questions about what Africa wants from Rio and whether Africa’s interpretation of the green economy/growth concept is sufficiently well defined.

Yet even at this late hour such challenges offer Africa a unique opportunity to take the lead in the green economy. Rio+20 is a narrow window for Africa to forge its green identity, demonstrate its collective progress towards sustainability since 1992, present its green credentials and promote its potential for rapid green growth. This is a one-off chance for Africa to show the world how its Green Revolution launched 20 years ago has laid the foundations for a green growth engine that can help rebalance and stabilise the global economy. With the global brown economy facing a great contraction, Africa can provide a great expansion of the green.

Now is the time for Africa to provide the courage and vision for Rio. More than any other continent, Africa is speaking with one voice. If Africa is to fulfil its ambitions and play a meaningful and stabilising role in the 21st century this voice in negotiations at Rio is critical.

Africa’s Consensus Statement to Rio+20 (CS), the continent’s key negotiating document, makes a sound case why the rest of the world should invest in Africa’s green economies to meet the challenges ahead. But it could be strengthened by putting greater emphasis on the tremendous green investment opportunities that can give the global green economy the boost it urgently needs. It could be strengthened by proposing concrete green growth strategies and plans as well as the necessary institutional frameworks that could lead to Sustainable Development Goals. Africa’s negotiators could make a more positive case by showing how the continent’s vast untapped resources - mineral, ecological and human - if developed sustainably can act as a green growth buffer against the unsustainable brown economy which is expanding fast across the continent.

Item 24 of the CS calls on the international community “to put an international investment strategy into place to facilitate the transition towards a green economy.” This call highlights a specific opportunity for Africa. Instead of waiting for the international community, preoccupied as it is with multiple crises, to deliver a meaningful green investment strategy on time, Africa is in a strong position to propose strategies and plans of its own. Rio+20 is a historic forum for Africa to put forward strategies that would produce multi-win scenarios and plans that would appeal to others’ enlightened self-interest. The result could be a fair deal with Africa that would be a fair deal for all.

With its tremendous resources, 20 years’ sustainable development experience, huge demographic advantages, promising growth forecasts and the lightest footprint on the planet, Africa is well qualified and well positioned to take the lead in the global green economy. As a green growth engine, this vast continent of 1 billion could generate rapid and sustained demand for green technologies, goods and services, create millions of green jobs, provide ecological services, turn the challenges of climate change into opportunities as well as inspire the browner economies of the advanced and emerging countries to take greener paths.

In Africa the aspirations of Agenda 21 can now become a practical reality. Everything needed to expand the green economy is ready. Africa’s institutions are well established. The tools and technologies have been developed. The knowledge, information and skills are there. The multi-disciplines are already at work. New measurements and accounting systems are being explored. Governments, businesses and global institutions are sufficiently reformed and know it has to happen. There are trillions of global dollars sitting idle or spinning in global roulette wheels. Anyone with money is saying “Where can I invest?”

The urgency to move forward and fast is mounting. Africa has the world’s youth on its side for long-term, green plans and may never again be in such an advantageous position. Africa’s 2011 Green Economy Initiative followed by the successful 2012 World Economic Forum in Africa, are two of the many spring boards to Rio+20. As the late Wangari Maathai often said, “We know what to do: why don’t we do it?”  

With only days left before Rio there is still time to assemble informal draft green investment plans as part of an African green growth strategy. Such plans designed from the ‘earth-up’ could lead to ideas for green institutional frameworks and Sustainable Development Goals, both major themes of the Summit. Curiosity, collaboration, coordination, a sense of responsibility and web-based research tools are the only inputs needed for a draft plan.

With the vast amount of information on Africa literally at our fingertips it should now be possible for a group of ‘green explorers’, African or non-African, to put together a draft green investment plan in time for Rio+20 that would reveal a wide range of green investment opportunities across a wide range of rural and urban landscapes. Working Towards a Green Economy in Africa is a blog that hopes to encourage green explorers in Africa to create 54 draft plans. Africa’s advantage is that their green explorers have already been exploring for 20 years.

The first part of the blog is this Call to Green Action: Rio+20+Africa. It is an open forum and conversation that invites green explorers to put forward suggestions for green investment in Africa. In the final days before the Summit the blog hopes to assemble simple and informal draft green investment plans based on integrated river basin management - a holistic approach to sustainable development. 54 green investment blogs for 54 river basins in 54 African countries could be part of the rethinking and reframing of Africa needed for the 21^st century. The Rio+20 Summit is a narrow window of opportunity for Africa to take a big step forward on the journey towards a green economy that can lead to sustainability, resilience and economic independence.

Although time is short, this constraint can provide the focus needed to encourage and coordinate 54 green investment blogs that will give responsible investors a sample of the great, green opportunities waiting in Africa. This is the time for ‘joined-up thinking’ – something, perhaps, that Africans never lost.

The next step to take, when you have read this Call to Green Action, is to visit the blog Working Towards a Green Economy in Africa. At the end of each post is space for comments which will begin an on-going Africa conversation or journey, with Rio as the first goal. The comments at the end of each post which support this campaign will be compiled as ‘Green Supporters’. More specifically, at the end of the Call to Green Action, the comments space is also where ‘Green Explorers’ can put their name, nationality, chosen country, the river basin they wish to explore and why they have chosen it.

Many of Africa’s vast river basins, though rich in potential, are still remote and very challenging, so for the purposes of the draft plan in time for Rio, the green exploration will be easier if the chosen basin were reasonably accessible and connected, and including one large urban centre. In Ethiopia, for instance, the Awash River Basin in the north-east of the country has urban centres, is accessible, well studied, severely degraded by ‘brown’ development and in urgent need of green investment. The three ecological zones of the Awash Basin – upper, middle and lower -also have huge green growth potential.

The blog post, A Draft Green Investment Plan, outlines how the journey towards a green economy in an African river basin might begin. Keeping such a vast subject as simple as possible the plan proposes seven green investment categories, starting with green success stories of which there are countless examples in Africa’s thousands of river basins. In the past 20 years Africans have been exploring and developing their river basins with scientific eyes. Africa’s knowledge, information and communications economies have grown exponentially. Everything required for expanding the green economy in any given river basin in Africa is already known. Web-based research tools can uncover endless possibilities and opportunities as well as challenges that can be turned into opportunities in Africa’s green economy. Exploring, compiling and communicating even a fraction of the vast potential of 54 African river basins in time for Rio is the first challenge.

If two or more green explorers come forward interested in exploring a particular river basin they can ‘join-up’ their thinking and research in their particular river basin blog. As the information comes in, various templates will be used to compile the information into a draft green investment plan.

The first aim of this blog is to add something to Africa’s voice at Rio and to promote Africa’s green economy as a key theme of the Summit. There is a historic opportunity on 20-22 June that cannot be ignored. The next aim of the draft plan is to discover ways for African countries to propose to the international community an investment strategy “to facilitate the transition towards a green economy” (CS 24). Such a strategy can lead to a final, workable and well-financed green investment plan for 54 river basins, backed by governments, businesses, international institutions and NGOs. The next stage, after Rio, is for a ‘green stimulus’ to put the plan into action and get Africa’s green growth engine up to speed. The urgency for this cannot be overstated because as African leaders often say, “We have to run just to stand still.”

For many years Africans and non-Africans have been calling for a 'Marshall Plan' for Africa. Such a plan for reconstruction might have been appropriate after the destruction of the post-colonial ‘lost decades’. Today, Africa does not need a plan for reconstruction but rather a 'green new deal' with the international community that recognises what has been achieved in the past two decades and builds on it to ensure Africa becomes a green engine for sustainable global growth instead of a brown growth engine which could soon break down or run out of fuel.

As of 6 June this Call to Action is being sent to Africa’s environmental ministries, authorities and agencies. It will also be sent to various institutions and individuals who might be interested in Working Towards a Green Economy in Africa.

AN IMMENSLY RICH COSMOS

"The continent is too large to describe. It is a veritable ocean, a separate planet, a varied and immensely rich cosmos. Only with the greatest simplification, for the sake of convenience, can we say ‘Africa.’ In reality, except as a geographical appellation, Africa does not exist” - Ryszard Kapuscinski, Shadow under the Sun, 1998.

When thinking about Africa it is impossible to avoid Kapuscinski’s greatest simplification. Africa is as large as the USA, China, India and Australia combined. Covering 30 million km², with one billion people speaking 2,000 languages in 54 nation states, Africa is the oldest, most diverse, most challenging and least understood region on earth.  During China’s 2006 ‘Year of Africa’, billboards in Beijing depicted Africa as the ‘Land of Myth, Mystery and Miracles’. Western ignorance surrounding this immensely rich cosmos  was thrown into focus in 2010 when Barack Obama, US president, had to remind fellow Americans, the most advanced people on the planet, that "Africa is a continent, not a country."

From 20-22 June the world will meet in Brazil for the United Nations Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development. The green economy and the institutional frameworks for sustainable development and poverty eradication are key themes of the summit. During the Conference it is hoped that the international community will agree on a set of Sustainable Development Goals, appoint a global ‘high commissioner’ for the environment and elevate the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) to Organisation status equal to WTO or WHO. This once-in-a-generation event takes place against a backdrop of mounting global economic, financial, environmental, social and security crises including food, water and energy.

At the heart of the complex web of factors causing the world’s multiple crises is the fundamental imbalance between the dominant, unsustainable, high carbon ‘brown’ economy with its escalating ‘hidden’ costs - environmental, social and economic - and the evolving, low carbon ‘green’ economy that strives to account for every cost and is the only known route to sustainability. UNEP’s 2011 report - Towards a Green Economy - demonstrates how a rapid and sustained expansion of the global green economy is essential if we are to avoid creating the ‘perfect storm’ of converging crises expected to strike by the time of Rio+40.

It will take decades, multi-trillions of dollars and possibly massive social upheavals to phase out the brown economy of the high carbon, resource-intensive industrial world. The emerging economies, led by China, are already well advanced along the brown path to growth and the further they go the more difficult it will become to go green. In Africa, where the brown economy is least developed, the expansion of the green economy can be easier, faster and cheaper.

The historic Rio+20 summit also coincides with the rise of Africa. The last frontier for investment and greatest store of untapped resources on earth – mineral, ecological and human - is open, connected and ready for business. Since the first Earth Summit, Africa’s sustainable development policies and focus on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues have laid the foundations for a green economy. Economic growth figures and forecasts combined with progress on the ‘green’ MDGs show that Africa is ready to assume a new role. 

The tools, technologies and skills are now sufficiently developed in Africa to turn the aspirations of Agenda 21, the first summit’s defining document, into practical realities. The next stage is for green investors to understand the situation on the ground and to explore Africa’s enormous opportunities. Africa’s 2011 Green Economy Initiative followed by the successful 2012 World Economic Forum in Africa are natural spring boards to the next stage. 

Ethiopia’s Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, calls Africa “a green field for investment because it is the least developed region on earth.” If Africa is to become a sustainable engine of global growth, adding an estimated $3 trillion (or more) to the global economy over the next decade, it is in everybody’s long-term interest that as much of this wealth as possible goes into the green economy rather than the brown. The challenge for Africa is to keep its green fields green.

There is an enthusiasm sweeping across Africa not seen since the 1960s. Some say the future will be African, that Africa’s time has come. However, such hopes have been dashed before and while ‘this time is different’ unfortunately so much in Africa and worldwide is still the same and in many respects worse than before.  African economies remain the world’s most vulnerable to an increasing number of outside and inside shocks. The perfect storm will hit Africa faster and harder than anywhere else. Rapid and sustained growth is therefore essential. African leaders have to run just to stand still. They realise that green growth is the only way forward. Africa’s Green Revolution is more important than ever.

The most immediate threat to Africa’s green growth is not climate change, nor even global economic volatility, both of which can act as catalysts for change, but the current expansion of the brown economy across the continent. From around 2003 the ‘big push’ into Africa by the emerging economies, led by China, coincided with the biggest global boom in history and gave Africa the economic boost it needed. But the emerging markets’ boom has not brought enough emerging ideas on how to develop Africa for the 21^st century. In fact, it looks like turning back the clock. Africa’s debts are rising again. Capital flight is higher than capital inflows. The old hidden costs are returning.

The surge in brown investment across Africa – the most potent symbols of which are mega-scale mines, dams, farms and sugar enterprises – runs the risk of undoing Africa’s Green Revolution and 20 years’ green progress. Inequality, one of the most glaring hidden costs of the brown economy, is already causing huge swathes of discontent across the continent and could easily jeopardise ambitions. Multi-billion dollar contracts in fragile economies are ripe for misallocation.  Headlines like Second Scramble for Africa, Sub-Saharan Gold Rush, Boom Time in Africa and the New Great Game are sufficient warning signs. Instead of becoming the first frontier for the green economy, Africa is in danger of becoming the last frontier for the brown.

The planning, technology, economics and finance, the assumptions and even many of the attitudes of the ‘China model’, the ‘India model’, the ‘Saudi model’ etc in Africa are little different to those of the ‘post-colonial model’ that failed so rapidly and dramatically, only this time investments are on mega scales with correspondingly mega hidden costs and risks. The hidden costs of these 20^th century, brown development models in Africa’s complex, harsh and unpredictable conditions are higher and felt sooner than anywhere else. These costs are now well known, there are more of them and they are increasing as the planet heats up, eco-systems break down, populations increase and the imbalances of the global brown economy spin out of control.

Security costs and opportunity costs must now be added to the lengthening list of 21^st century hidden costs of brown development. Security costs are increasing with the rising discontent across the continent. The so-called land grabs isolate thousands of potentially well-armed people. An African country pursuing brown development strategies also risks the opportunity costs of deterring green investors. Brown development attracts investors because the rules are slack whereas green development attracts them because the rules are strict.   

If the economic development strategies of the China model in China has produced an economy which, as China’s premier Wen Jiabao often reminds us, “is unbalanced, uncoordinated and unsustainable” these costs in Africa could be rapidly magnified. Using such an outdated (1980s) development model in Africa, as Einstein might have said, “is like trying to solve a problem by using the same thinking that caused the problem in the first place.” Top-down development without bottom-up participation has already been tried in Africa during the post colonial period and it failed dramatically.

A direct warning of this came from a senior Chinese official at the recent World Economic Forum meeting in Addis Ababa: “Do not necessarily do what we did”, warned the official of the China Investment Forum. Policies of “sheer economic growth” should be avoided, he said. “We now suffer pollution and an unequal distribution of wealth and opportunities… You have a clean sheet of paper here. Try to write something beautiful.”

The "something beautiful" could be African strategies to expand the green economy.

The Rio+20 Summit is a unique opportunity for Africa to forge its green identity, to demonstrate its collective progress towards sustainability since 1992 and to present its green growth potential to the world. More than any other continent, Africa is speaking with one voice. If Africa is to fulfil its ambitions and play a meaningful and stabilising role in the 21st century this voice in negotiations at Rio is critical.

Africa’s October 2011 Consensus Statement (CS) is the continent’s key negotiating document for Rio+20. While the CS makes a sound case for investing in Africa’s green economies it could be strengthened by putting greater emphasis on the continent’s tremendous green growth opportunities and by proposing concrete green investment plans. Africa’s negotiators could make a more positive case by saying more about Africa’s role in rebalancing the global economy and how the continent’s vast green fields can act as a buffer against the encroaching brown economy.

Item 24 of the CS calls on the international community “to put an international investment strategy into place to facilitate the transition towards a green economy.” This call is from the Old Africa, asking outsiders who do not understand their lands to devise green growth strategies for them. Instead, the New Africa is perfectly placed to propose African strategies based on the experience of the  past 20 years. Instead of waiting for the international community, preoccupied as it is with multiple crises, to deliver a meaningful green investment strategy on time, Africa is in a strong position to propose its own. Rio+20 is a historic forum for Africa to put forward plans that would appeal to other’s enlightened self-interest.

With its vast resources, 20 years’ sustainable development experience, demographic advantages, the lightest footprint on the planet and the promising growth forecasts, Africa is well qualified to take the lead in developing green growth strategies that could generate huge demand for green technologies, goods and services, create green jobs and inspire the browner economies to take a greener path.

A green growth strategy could begin with: (a) a green investment plan to release Africa’s green growth potential and (b) the institutional framework to design and build green economies including structures to roll back and redirect the unsustainable brown economy which is expanding fast across the continent. These two themes are consistent with the sustainability agenda of Rio+20 and could help in the development of Sustainable Development Goals. Africa’s advantage in developing green growth strategies and the institutional frameworks is in the achievements of the past 20 years.

In March 2009, with the threat of failed states looming over Africa, Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia’s prime minister and the continent’s leading spokesperson, said that Africa would have to “rethink” its “development strategies” and “learn to do well in a less permissive age.” Three years later, with the threat of austerity increasing worldwide, the less permissive age looks like it could be prolonged. The need for a rethink, of not only Africa’s but everybody’s development strategies, is more urgent than ever. Rio+20 is a unique opportunity for Africa to show that their rethink has begun.

With the global brown economy lurching from one crisis to the next and the distance between crises getting shorter there is no time to lose. The window of opportunity is narrowing and Africa may never again be in such an advantageous position. Rio+20 is a historic forum for Africa to show that it can lead in the green economy and why investors should take a closer look.

Working Towards a Green Economy in Africa is a blog that hopes to develop a conversation about Africa’s green potential. It is a green exploration of Africa. The blog hopes to generate enough interest and information on a wide range of green growth opportunities in Africa to form a simple, informal, draft green investment plan that would give investors and donors a sample of far greater opportunities in the last frontier.

A simple framework for understanding the green potential of Africa’s huge resources could begin with assessments on several levels: continental, trade bloc, country, river basin and eco-system level. Using 21^st century measurements, simple compilations of statistics on Africa’s ecological, human and mineral resources - for the whole continent, for 54 countries and 54 chosen river basins - would quickly demonstrate green growth potential. River basins are natural designations for green growth assessments.

Integrated river basin management, systems thinking and biosphere reserves embody the holistic approach to sustainable development and are key tools for unlocking Africa’s green economy. Instead of investing in mega-brown development strategies Africa has the resources and qualifications to lead the world in mega-green. Africa’s great advantage in expanding the green economy is that their ‘under-developed’ river basins are already mostly green. 

All it takes is for 54 ‘green explorers’ in Africa, one for each country, to study a chosen river basin for a green growth assessment. An exploration of a chosen river basin would soon reveal a wide range of investment opportunities across a wide range of categories, or ‘shades’ of green.

Curiosity, collaboration, coordination, a sense of responsibility and web-based research tools are the only inputs needed to assemble a draft green investment plan. With the vast amount of information on Africa literally at our fingertips it should now be possible for green explorers to put together a draft plan for Africa in time for Rio+20. Out of such a ground-level plan ideas would emerge ideas for the institutional frameworks required take the plans forward, including structures for redirecting the energy and finance of the brown economy into more sustainable development strategies. Another of Africa’s great advantages is that the green explorers have been exploring their river basins since 1992.

54 blogs for 54 river basins in 54 African countries could be a step on the journey towards a green economy in Africa that can lead to sustainability, resilience and economic independence. The result could be a fair deal with Africa that could be a fair deal for all. Now is the time for ‘joined-up thinking’, something perhaps that Africa never lost.

AFRICA: FIRST GREEN FRONTIER (OR LAST BROWN)

This is the time to scale-up progress to achieve a uniquely African Green Revolution. So much is at stake, and the time is ripe.
Kofi Anan, former United Nations Secretary General - 2010

Overview 

Africa is the last frontier for investment and could be a new ‘green’ growth engine that can play a pivotal role in rebalancing the global economy. Africa is still extremely vulnerable to an increasing number of outside and inside shocks including the ‘brown’ economy which is expanding fast across the continent. Africa is in danger of becoming the last frontier for the brown investment instead of the first frontier for green. If Africa is a ‘green field’ for investment it is in everybody’s long-term interest to keep the field green. This is Africa’s greatest challenge.

From 20-22 June 2012 the world will meet in Brazil for the United Nations Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development. This first ‘Earth Summit’ of the 21st century will assess progress made in the past 20 years and focus on two themes for the future: (a) a green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication; and (b) the institutional framework for sustainable development. 

During the Conference it is hoped that the international community will agree on a set of Sustainable Development Goals; appoint a global ‘high commissioner’ for the environment, and elevate the United Nations Environment Program to Organisation status equal to WTO or WHO.

This once-in-a-generation event takes place against a backdrop of mounting global economic, financial, environmental and social crises. The single issue which will decide the outcome of the Summit is forging a global consensus on the green economy and how to generate its growth. Without the rapid and sustained expansion of the evolving and sustainable green economy as a counterbalance to the dominant and unsustainable brown economy all other growth will be short-lived.

The historic Summit also coincides with the rise of Africa as the last frontier for investment and the new engine of global growth. After 50 years of independence the world’s largest store of untapped of resources – mineral, ecological and human - is opening up and ready for business. For the first time Africa's resources are becoming accessible to the rest of the world and the world’s products are becoming accessible to Africa.

In the past four years since the beginning of the current crisis a record number of conferences, meetings, reports, papers, articles, speeches, interviews and films confirm Africa's enhanced position in global affairs.  The recent success and inspiration of the May 2012 World Economic Forum on Africa in is springboard to the world stage. The Rio+20 Summit could be the next. So great is the continent's growth potential some say this will be an African century.

However, this is Africa's third era of hope and it arrives at a time of great uncertainty. Although "this time is different" unfortunately so much in Africa and worldwide are still the same. Huge imbalances remain and many are getting worse.  How Africa continues its rise and manages its resources in such uncertain times will have a major influence on the future of the global green economy and the course of the 21st century. The hidden costs of our current brown economic development model are causing rapidly diminishing returns. Those costs in Africa's complex, unpredictable and often hostile conditions are higher and appear earlier than anywhere else. 

1. Global economic volatility. Despite the 2010 rebound from the Great Recession, the impressive growth forecasts and current macro-economic stability, Africa is a long way from economic independence and remains the continent most vulnerable to global economic volatility. In the event of a prolonged downturn the continent could face the threat of multiple failed states just at it did in early 2009 in the depths of the financial crisis. After the 2005 debt relief, Africa's debts  are rising again, in some countries to unsustainable levels. Rapid and sustained growth in Africa is essential. As African leaders often remind us: "We have to run just to stand still." Poor development decisions, misallocation of funds and non-performing billion dollar loans in a rapidly slowing global economy could set Africa back once more. 

2. Climate change. Although Africa has huge agricultural and hydrological potential, climate change is having a disproportionate impact on output and is set to get worse. Food production could halve by 2030 while populations in places could double. Rampant deforestation, spreading desertification and increased floods could make vast areas uninhabitable. For Africa to meet these challenges nothing short of multi-revolutions are urgently needed in planning, technology, economics, finance, hydrology, agriculture, biomass production and human aspiration. The consequences of Africa's failure to adapt to the conditions ahead are unthinkable.

3. Demographics. Africa's greatest sustainable resource is its youthful populations which are set expand  over the coming decades. In 30 years' time, in a much older world, Africa's youth will play a major role in global productivity. Now is the time to work with them to prepare for such a responsibility. However, Africa's current youth unemployment in places is reaching emergency proportions. Unless millions of sustainable jobs are created over the next decade Africa's tremendous demographic dividend could turn into a demographic time-bomb that will impact on the rest of the world..

4. Capital flight. Given the above it is not surprising that Africa has the greatest capital flight of any other region. For all the billions of dollars of pouring into Africa billions more are pouring out. This imbalance makes Africa a net creditor to the rest of the world. Unless more sustainable economic development models are created to level the playing field and give people trust, those with money will continue to take it out to safer places eventually bleeding the continent to death.

5. Business-as-usual or the brown economy. Although 'this time is different' in Africa much of the current boom is still high-carbon, resource-intensive, environmentally degrading and socially divisive - a brown economy. Since 2003, the big push by the emerging economies, led by China, while bringing much-needed investment is not bringing enough emerging ideas. The planning, technology, economics, assumptions and even some of the attitudes of the 'China model' in Africa are little different to those of the post-colonial model only now investments are on mega-scales with equally mega hidden costs and risks. If the China model in China, as premier Wen Jiabao often says,  has produced an economy which is "unbalanced, uncoordinated and unsustainable" these costs in Africa could be greatly and rapidly magnified.  China is the game changer in Africa but so far the 'Wisdom of the East' is not on great display.  

If Africa is to fulfil its ambitions and become a sustainable engine for global growth, with the potential to add an estimated $3 trillion to the global economy over the next decade, it is in everyone’s long-term interest that as much of this wealth as possible goes into the green economy rather than the brown. Instead of becoming the last frontier for brown investment, which could easily happen, Africa can become the first frontier for green. The continent's historic lack of brown development is now its greatest advantage. The 'greatest imbalance on earth' can now play a pivotal role in the 'great rebalancing.'

Ethiopia’s prime minister, Meles Zenawi, describes Africa as a ‘green field for investment because it is the least-developed region on earth’. The challenge is to keep the green field green. Africa’s voice at Rio is therefore critical. There is so much at stake.

2. AFRICA'S VOICE AT RIO+20

"Sir John Rose, chief executive of Rolls-Royce...once remarked to me that in what I call the flat [globalised] world we will speak less and less about ‘developed, developing, and underdeveloped' countries’ and more about ‘smart, smarter and smartest' countries."
Thomas L. Friedman, The World is Flat - 2005 

Overview. 
Africa’s voice at Rio is critical. This is a historic opportunity for Africa to present its green credentials to the world and demonstrate the advantages in expanding its green economies. Africa’s key negotiating document, the Consensus Statement, could be strengthened by emphasising Africa’s green investment opportunities and long-term green growth potential. Instead of calling on the international community to put green investment strategies into place on time, Africa is well positioned and amply qualified to propose its own.

For countless generations since the beginning of time African economies were green. Sustainability has been practiced in Africa longer than anywhere on earth. All this changed with the arrival of industrial technologies and organisation. The change accelerated after independence. The post-colonial development model which was designed to transform rather than adapt Africa was a disaster. Centrally planned, one-size-fits-all, it was high carbon, resource intensive, environmentally degrading and socially divisive. Today we call this the 'brown' economy.

By the end of the 1980s 'lost decade' Africa was covered with billions of dollars worth of failed or failing projects and billions of dollars of debt. The world's libraries are full of explanations why Africa's first era of hope led so quickly to disillusion and decline. The reasons are many and complex: oil prices, commodity prices, outside interference, geo-politics etc. Many people point to Africa's leaders for the failures and indeed there were leadership failures on a colossal scale. But such blame ignores the fact that the industrial systems of the  'brown' economy they were meant to 'lead' were not suitable for Africa's complex, harsh and unpredictable conditions and have since proved globally unsustainable. The hidden costs of brown development strategies were felt first and were higher in Africa than anywhere else.

In June 1992 Ethiopia's new government hosted Africa's first international green conference in Addis Ababa. Held to coincide with the UN's "Earth Summit" in Rio de Janeiro, the Lem (or Green) Meeting outlined the failings of the post-colonial development model while laying the foundations for sustainable development strategies. 

In his address on the occasion, Meles Zenawi, then President of the Transitional Government (Prime Minister since 1995) encapsulated the thinking of the day by calling for "a conservation-based, people-led, people-centred development...[requiring]...a  multi-disciplinary and broad-spectrum approach, since there is no piece-meal solution to the problem at hand." The Lem Meeting was one of the key moments in Africa's Green Revolution and marked the beginnings of what we now call Africa's green economy.

The Rio+20 Summit is a unique opportunity for Africa to demonstrate its collective progress towards sustainability since 1992 and to present its green credentials to the world. It is a three-day window of opportunity for Africa to take the lead and propose ways to expand its green economies that can help rebalance the global economy. At Rio, Africa more than any other continent will be speaking with one voice. In negotiations this single voice is a major advantage.  

Africa’s key negotiating document for Rio is the 13-page Consensus Statement from Ministers of African States, assembled during a preparatory conference in Addis Ababa in October 2011. The Consensus Statement demonstrates the tremendous advances in sustainable development thinking and experience in Africa over the past 20 years and makes a sound case for why the rest of the world should work with Africa to build a green economy in order to meet the challenges ahead.

Yet as a negotiating document it misses two important points for making a more positive case: (a) Africa’s green growth potential as a means of rebalancing the global economy, and (b) Africa as a buffer against the expansion of the unsustainable brown economy.

If Africa is a green field for investment and the new engine for global growth, more could be said about the continent’s huge growth opportunities and its position to influence global decision-making. Africa’s Consensus at Rio+20 would be stronger and more effective if it presented concrete green growth plans that would appeal to others' enlightened self-interest.

Item 24 of the Consensus Statement emphasises the need to promote the green economy in Africa through national and internationally agreed objectives, imperatives and commitments. The Consensus “calls on the international community to put an international investment strategy into place to facilitate the transition towards a green economy.” This call, however, is from the "old" Africa asking outsiders who don't understand their lands to fix their problems, and highlights an opportunity for the "new" Africa to propose strategies of their own.

Instead of waiting for the international community, preoccupied as it is with multiple crises, to deliver a meaningful sustainable growth strategy on time, Africa has a unique opportunity to propose a strategy of its own. With its vast resources, tremendous economic growth potential, 20 years’ sustainable development experience (smallholder farming, land rehabilitation and general progress on meeting MDGs, made possible by new technologies) and huge demographic advantages, Africa is in a strong position to take the lead in developing green growth strategies.

The statistics speak for themselves. The International Monetary Fund, World Bank and the United Nations are clear on Africa's potential. The billions of dollars pouring into Africa from around the globe demonstrate a new-found confidence.   The success and inspiration of the May 2012 World Economic Forum on Africa in Addis Ababa confirms Africa's enhanced position in global affairs.

On March 12 the Financial Times gave an encouraging view of the forthcoming summit: "Business to play a big role in green economy at next Rio conference." Yet on April 24 the FT gave more negative view: "Earth talks 'in need of vision and direction'" with just a side reference to the "so-called 'green economies.'" With the global brown economy heading for a possibly prolonged contraction this is a challenge and an opportunity for Africa to provide the vision and direction at Rio by proposing strategies to expand the green.

3. A DRAFT GREEN INVESTMENT PLAN

How we measure development will determine how we do development.

Inger Anderson, Vice President, Sustainable Development Network, World Bank, 2011

Overview.

Everything required for a rapid expansion of the green economy in Africa is already known. The aspirations of Agenda 21 can become a practical reality in Africa today.The framework for a plan could be on several levels: continental, trade bloc, country, river basin and eco-system level. River basins are natural designations for making green growth assessments and plans. Using web-based research tools a 'Green Exploration' of 54 African river basins would reveal a wide range of investment opportunities in different 'shades' of green.   

Everything that needs to be known about Africa for a rapid expansion of the green economy is already known. The past two decades has seen exponential growth in Africa's knowledge, information and communications economies.  In the three years since the depths of the financial crisis Africa has produced enough material and evidence, from Green Economy Initiatives to World Economic Forums, to give it a global lead in the green economy. For Rio+20 the process needs to be summarised, coordinated and accelerated. Green growth information could be rapidly and widely communicated into the mainstream so that the world can see the potential of Africa's green fields. This can be started by developing some straightforward green investment plans for Africa. An unofficial draft green investment plan could be assembled though a series of blogs like this that explore Africa's green growth potential.    

With the vast amount of information now at our fingertips it should now be possible to put together such a draft plan for Africa in time for the Rio Summit. It requires no funding and needs only curiosity, understanding, collaboration and coordination. The key technology is the internet, the key input is time. The result would be a plan based on a simple framework that allows investors to take a closer look at what is happening on the ground in Africa, enabling them to make rational and responsible investment decisions.

The plan could focus relevant information on Africa’s green growth potential. It could be structured on several basic levels: continental, country, river basin and eco-system level. River basins are natural designations for evaluating green growth potential. Looking closely at specific eco-systems simplifies the process.

The first part of the plan could outline Africa's huge untapped or under-utilised resources – human, mineral and ecological - including total resource endowment for the whole continent, for each country and for a chosen river basin. Since the first Rio Summit we have come a long way in measuring natural wealth and green economic growth potential. Integrated river basin planning, biosphere reserves and ‘systems thinking’ are key tools. The clean technologies are ready. The skills and abilities are well advanced, the multi-disciplines are already at work. With today's knowledge, information and communications the aspirations of Agenda 21, the defining document of the first Earth Summit, can now become a practical reality in Africa's green and unspoiled fields.

The next part of the plan could sub-divide individual river basins into three ecological zones - upper, middle and lower - as defined by altitude. This is essential as one-size-does-not-fit-all in the green economy. Narrowing the focus of an integrated river basin plan to identify specific green investment opportunities, the next level could be the biosphere reserve, a managed eco-system where the aim is to achieve sustainability by balancing the economy, ecology and society. Based on UNESCO’s guiding principles, biosphere reserves can be seen as nature’s ‘laboratories’ for green development where any hidden costs are exposed, accounted for and eventually eliminated.

First proposed in the 1960s and now developed on all continents, biosphere reserves have been tried and tested enough to be any size today. Biosphere reserves or similar designations can range from village eco-system level to entire eco-zones of river basins with cities and industries and millions of people. After 20 years’ green research and development experience, Africa is now in a position to propose and launch mega-green projects, where new economies of scale are discovered. Such projects would act as a counterbalance to the expanding brown economy in Africa, the most potent symbols of which are the mega mines, dams, farms, sugar enterprises and oil and gas wells.

Integrated mega-green river basin projects can reinvent traditional interdependencies and trade, reintegrate the economy with people and nature, and restore Africa's moral economy - a system of redistribution which has been eroded by a new, alien system where 'winner takes all.' Integrated development will produce clusters and a multiplier effect where the whole is worth more than the sum of the individual parts.

Within a large-scale biosphere reserve, including urban areas, there will be a wide range of investment opportunities, in different ‘shades’ of green including:

1. Existing green economic success stories: clean energy, water and sanitation, land rehabilitation, eco-tourism, eco-architecture, green manufacturing, organic farming and animal husbandry etc. From UN/World Bank to village level, government to NGOs, there are countless green success stories in Africa needing investment.  

2. Greening the existing brown economy: investments in new technologies including cleaning up polluting industries, retrofitting factories and buildings, ‘cash for clunkers’ or 'scrappage schemes' for inefficient technologies and transport systems, integrating agro-industries and large-scale dams within biosphere reserves where the hidden costs are accounted for and minimised.

3. Reinventing and greening abandoned or forgotten projects: billions of dollars' worth of failed or failing assets all over Africa - farms, factories, mines, fisheries, infrastructure etc. - could be brought into the green economy using new technologies, new markets, new business models and best practices that minimise hidden costs.

      

      4. Formalising and greening the informal economy: the informal economy is as high as 80 per cent in some African countries. Much of this ‘black’ or ‘grey’ market has a light footprint, is socially cohesive, efficient and waste-free with minimum hidden costs. These markets are more likely to be brought into the transparent level playing field of the green economy rather than the opaque, unlevel field of the brown.

      

      5. Discovering green investment opportunities for the future: There exists now a narrow window of opportunity for Africans to truly leapfrog the old inherited systems and technologies of the brown economy. With the speed at which technologies and the thinking behind them are moving, Africans could be developing their green fields and creating green growth in ten years time in ways that we cannot yet imagine.

      6. Redirecting brown investments. For African governments who have to "run just to stand still" it might be impossible to say no to a 'brown' investor whose business model does not account for the hidden costs. This offers a challenge to Africa's new green development experts who can work with such investors to redirect their energies and finance towards the green economy. Attracting brown investors because the rules are slack incurs the huge opportunity cost of deterring green investors will be attracted because the rules are strict. 

7. Greening aid. Green growth strategies from African governments could revolutionise aid by creating huge demand for green technologies, goods and services that would appeal to donar's enlightened self-interest; they are more likely to fulfill their aid promises if African governments show concrete commitments to green growth that would help balance the global economy. All the ground work for 'greening aid' has been done already and various categories have been created.
       
To launch an African draft green investment plan in time for Rio+20 all that is required is for one person for each of Africa’s 54 countries to begin ‘green exploring’, through the internet, a chosen river basin, preferably one that is well-known and accessible. Once the river basin is reasonably understood it can be looked at in closer detail as three ecological zones – upper, middle and lower. For the purposes of a draft plan for Rio it would be sufficient to compile a range of green investment opportunities, as outlined above, in each of the three eco-zones of a river basin, leaving biosphere designation until the final plan. Discovering and compiling just ten opportunities in each of the three eco-zones of Africa’s 54 chosen river basins would already give investors an impressive and interesting sample of possibilities.

4. INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORKS

Africans have been and are the frontiersmen of mankind who have colonised an especially hostile region of the world on behalf of the entire human race...It is why they deserve admiration, support and careful study.

John Iliffe, Africans – The history of a continent, 1995

Overview

The post-colonial institutional frameworks inherited by Africa were inadequate and caused huge disruptions throughout the continent. Since 1992 Africa has been building and adapting African institutions according to the situation on the ground where sustainability begins. Africa's fragile green foundations risk being undermined by the hidden costs of the expanding brown economy. Rio+20 is a historic opportunity for Africa to put forward proposals to gain recognition, strengthen and adapt its institutions to manage the growth of the green economy as well as phasing out the brown.

Over countless generations African institutions have evolved, developed and adapted to meet the challenges of opening up the greatest wilderness on earth and an especially hostile region of the world. Complex coping systems were established. Risk aversion in an unpredictable world was the key to sustainability. Africa's moral economies, as a redistributive process, ensured not only survival in the hard times but sometimes great abundance for all. Many of Africa's institutions survived until the 1960s which accounts for the relative wealth of the people at the time.  

At independence Africans inherited foreign institutional frameworks designed for a top-down development model intended to transform the continent. Although well-intentioned this high carbon, resource-intensive, environmentally degrading and socially divisive 'brown' model was vulnerable to multiple 'hidden costs' which were rapidly exposed in Africa's complex, unpredictable and often harsh conditions. In the past 20 years Africans have been restructuring and reforming the institutional frameworks, adapted this time to the realities on the ground where sustainable development begins, where bottom-up meets top-down..

Environmental ministries have been established. Africa’s Peer Review Mechanism is one of the most stringent in the world. The AU, NEPAD, Economic Commission for Africa, The Elders, Regional Trade Groups and MDG organisations are just a few of the institutional advances made over the past 20 years. In some countries there are also more women in institutions than any other region of the world.

However, the proliferation of brown mega-projects spreading across Africa today - mines, dams, oil and gas wells, agri-business and sugar enterprises – is cause for concern. One of the major hidden costs of these mega brown development strategies is diminishing transparency. Billions of dollars pouring into fragile countries just emerging from dictatorship or war can cause massive misallocation of funds and be hugely disruptive to democratic institutions. For all its great promise Africa remains the most vulnerable continent to a global economic volatility, climate change and geo-political instability, all of these directly caused by or exacerbated by the brown economy. Africa's wealth is very unevenly distributed across and within countries. Inequality, the most glaring hidden cost of the brown economy, is already causing great swathes of unrest across the continent and could jeopardise Africa’s new era of hope. Africa's institutions, including its banks, are under great pressure.

With the current brown investment boom that threatens to turn back the clock and undo 20 years’ green growth work in Africa, a second proposal for Rio+20 would be the institutional framework required to (a) implement green growth strategies for boosting the green economy as a counterweight to the brown, and (b) to understand the expanding brown economy in Africa and redirect its energy and finance towards sustainable development. Without the latter, the green investment plan cannot work. Africa’s Consensus Statement mentions the evolving green economy, as something to aspire to, 22 times, yet there is not a single mention of the existing brown economy which has to be understood and phased out in order for the green to grow.

Africa’s main advantages are reforms that have already been achieved over the past two decades. In the past four years since the beginning of the financial and economic crisis a record number of reports, papers, studies, articles, speeches, conferences and meetings have confirmed how much Africa has changed and is changing. Prudent policies and traditional risk aversion are Africa's key strengths.

Further reforms that Africa can propose to help build a green economy and redirect the brown economy could include the elevation of Africa’s environmental agencies (ministries, etc) to top government status to match the Rio+20 proposal to elevate UNEP to UNEO. They could also include setting up ‘green schools’ in all other institutions to disseminate and coordinate knowledge and information on the green economy. The institutional framework that has delivered progress on the MDGs could be strengthened, extended and adapted to design, develop and implement Africa’s new Sustainable Development Goals, one of the main themes at Rio+20.

To confirm their commitment to the green economy, African governments could become active and influential partners in the international green accounting schemes promoted by leading global bodies including the UN and World Bank. Many economists say "it is time to end the fetish with GDP." There are also an increasing number of international transparency initiatives African governments can sign up to show their commitment to sustainability. In a world crying out for new regulations in trade, finance, environment etc., Africa is well qualified to develop new and innovative regulatory frameworks that will accelerate the journey towards the green economy.

As the new global growth engine with the most immediate potential for green and sustainable economic expansion, Africa is now in a position to play a influential role in the creation of the ‘high commissioner’ for the environment. With 50 years of industrial development experience to draw on (brown as well as green) Africa, the most challenging yet most promising region on earth, is well qualified to lead the world in understanding, developing  and expanding the global green economy.

5. AFRICA’S THIRD ERA OF HOPE: GLOBALISATION ON TRIAL

In order to divine the future you must study the past.
Confucius, Chinese philosopher, 6^th century BC. 

Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. 
George Santayana, Spanish philosopher, 1863-1952.

Overview.
In the 1960s, Africa's first era of hope, ‘the white man’s civilisation was on trial.’ People thought at the time that ‘the fate of us all is bound up in Africa.’ It was a brown economic development model, the trial ended in disaster and Africa lost at least a decade. In the 1990’s ‘second liberation’ new trials began based on African civilisations and sustainability. Twenty years later Africa is the new growth engine. Today globalisation is on trial but the brown economy is still dominant and poses an even greater threat to Africa's 3rd era of hope. Africa and the world are at a cross roads. Africa's green explorers have been at work since 1992 and are uniquely qualified and uniquely positioned to lead the way towards a green economy.

Africa is so vast and often so hostile from first contacts in the 14^th century it took the Europeans 500 years to reach the heart of the continent. In the 1960s they were leaving after only 60 settled years. The optimists saw a rapid transformation through rapid industrialisation. They thought Africa could feed the world. Pessimists said it was too much too soon, "like laying down the track in front of an oncoming express train.” The pragmatists preferred to wait and see. The world’s most challenging continent was industrial technology’s greatest test. They said “the white man’s civilisation is on trial in Africa.” Those who understood the global consequences of success of failure said at the time, “the fate of us all in bound up in Africa.”

The pessimists were right. What we see now as the ‘brown’ economy in Africa soon turned hope to disillusion, decline and at least a lost decade. The early 1990s was Africa’s ‘second liberation’. The optimists this time saw adaptation instead of transformation, brought about by new thinking and new technologies and African sustainable development models. The Lem (or Green) Meeting in Addis Ababa in 1992 launched a Green, Green Revolution in Africa that would lead to reconciliation, sustainability and resilience. The pessimists were not convinced. They said Africa would remain a ‘basket case’. Too much had been destroyed, there were still too many old scores to settle and anyway the ‘green’ thing was a just fantasy. The pragmatists were still reserved. They saw both sides. It could go either way. Asia’s sleeping giants were beginning to stir and no one could tell how they would approach the 'forgotten continent.'

Twenty years later this is Africa’s third era of hope and it is now globalisation which is on trial. The optimists are talking again of transformation and of Africa feeding the world. They say “this time is different”, Africa's time has come. The pessimists admit that this time is different, but they say there is still too much  the same in Africa and worldwide. The old brown economy is once more expanding fast across the continent and the result, the pessimists say, will be the same as before, only worse. The pragmatists are no longer reserved. Africa's hopes are justified. Everything is ready. The transition from despair to hope is over. Africa’s green revolution can now take central stage. The old story of the brown economy is down to the final chapters. The new green story is being written. 

In March 2009 when the threat of failed states loomed across Africa, Meles Zenawi, Ethiopian prime minister and Africa's main spokesperson in international negotiations, said that Africans would have to "rethink" all their "development strategies" and "learn to do well in a less permissive age." With cries of austerity coming from the west three years later the less permissive age is likely to be prolonged and a "rethink" of Africa and everywhere else is needed more than ever.


With the right type of "rethink" the aspirations of Agenda 21 can now be practical reality in Africa. The knowledge and information are there. The technologies have been developed. The multi-disciplines are already at work. Business wants it to happen. Policy makers are trying to find ways forward. Global corporations are sitting on trillions of dollars. Investors are throwing trillions more into the volatile roulette wheel. Anyone with money is saying "where can I invest?" As the global brown economy faces a great contraction Africa is well-positioned and well-qualified to provide a great expansion of the green.

Over countless generations the frontiersmen and women of mankind have opened up the last great wilderness on earth. Africa’s resources are now accessible to the rest of the world and the world’s goods and services are available to Africa. How Africans manage their resources and consume the world’s products is critical. Will Africans try to catch up with Asia trying to catch up with the west's unsustainable life styles? Will Africans take over the debt-fuelled consumer boom? Will shopping become Africa’s new religion just to give the redundant brown economy its last gasp? Or will Africa’s youthful populations lead the rest of us on new paths to smarter production and consumption – a green economy?


Looking closely at Africa today, at the diverse opportunities in diverse river basins across the continent, it is possible to see how Africans can lead us on a greener path. As the late Wangari Maathi, one of Africa’s first green explorers and a great pragmatist, liked to say: “We know what to do so why don’t we do it?”




MICHAEL STREET: A FULLER PROFILE - OBSERVING AFRICA'S 3 ERAS OF HOPE

1970-1990. After a technical training in mechanical engineering in Britain I first visited Africa in 1973, travelling overland across the continent from Tunisia to Rwanda where in 1974 I began my first work in development, on a tea project financed by the (then) EEC. This coincided with the beginning of the end of Africa's first era of hope. Ethiopia's revolution in 1974 was perhaps the last surge of optimism on the continent before disillusion set in. For most of the following 16 years I continued to work on agro-industrial development projects – from construction, operation and maintenance to project design and management - in various countries: Burundi, Sudan, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Yemen, Zambia, Tanzania and Republic of Congo. Various crops were tea, coffee, palm oil and sisal. 

From my first project in Rwanda I began to question the value of the European industrial development model in Africa. Cutting down rainforest to plant a ‘cash crop’ for export, feeding hardwood logs into boilers to drive an alien process, trucking everything in, debts going up, tea prices going up and down, even then it seemed a reckless way to ‘develop’. Packing farmers and pastoralists into labour lines, top-down planning, hostage economics, resource-intensive, downstream and upstream impacts, externalities or ‘hidden’ costs - today we call this the ‘brown’ economy. At the time there was no other way and no other economy. Between jobs I also travelled extensively in Africa, often on foot, and always wondered how the challenging places I visited could ever be ‘developed’.  

By the end of the 1980s my work as consultant and project manager was mainly trying to ‘rescue’ brown development projects that had been studied for feasibility but not sustainability.  The hidden costs had not been factored in. Local knowledge was ignored. Risk management was unknown. By then Africa was covered with billions of dollars’ worth of failed or failing development projects, millions of starving and destitute people and billions of dollars of debt. Disillusioned, I left ‘development’ work in 1991.

1990-2000. During the 1990s I continued travelling as an independent traveller and as a tour guide and lecturer in the Mediterranean, Ethiopia and Eritrea. In Africa, a ‘second liberation’ was taking place, where Africans were taking a different approach to development; the word was sustainability. Learning from the lessons of the post-colonial model this was the beginning of a green revolution in Africa that would be truly green. Some called it Africa’s Renaissance. During this time I also lectured on Ethiopian and Eritrean history, culture, ornithology, architecture and development in various venues in the UK, USA, Italy and Australia. I also taught bird-watching techniques to local guides on Ethiopia’s first eco-tourism project at Bishingari on Lake Langano.

Despite Africa’s many tragedies, set-backs and disappointments during the 1990s, I saw how Africans for the first time since the arrival of industrial technologies, were moving forward in their own way, at their own pace, beginning to form a pan-African consensus. With environmental, social and governance issues (ESG) at the core of development strategies this was the beginning of a green-green revolution in Africa and the beginnings of what we now call the green economy. By 2000 and the signing of the Millennium Development Goals Africa was turning a corner.

2001 - present. In 2001 I made my base in Sicily (one foot in Africa) and since then have been developing, with my partner, two small biosphere reserves in two small river basins in the south-east of the island. The evolution of the global green economy over the past ten years, the thinking and the technologies behind it, has inspired our work in Sicily.

As I continued to travel in Africa I discovered something else happening. Around 2003, the ‘big push’ into the continent by the emerging markets, led by China, coincided with what turned out to be the biggest global economic boom in history. By this time Africa’s sustainability, or green, foundations were stable enough for Africa to enjoy the boom.  Growth figures since 2003 are well known.

But the ‘big push’ in Africa by the emerging markets looked like turning back the clock. As the boom gathered pace we heard about the Second Scramble for Africa, Land Grabbing and the Final Plunder. The planning, technology, economics and finance, the assumptions and even many of the attitudes of Africa’s new investment partners seem little different to those of our ‘model’ in the 1970s and 1980s, only this time it was on mega- scales with mega-hidden costs. The lessons learned were being forgotten. The brown economy was expanding again in Africa.

In 2004 and 2005 I travelled down the Awash River in Ethiopia. The Awash rises in the highlands near Addis Ababa, flows off the escarpment and along the Rift Valley floor, north into the Afar or Desert, the hottest desert on the planet. The main river flows for 1,100 km before finally dispersing over a broad flat plain forming a lush inland delta on the border with Djibouti, 80 km from the sea. The disappearence of this legendary river in the notorious ‘Danakil’ desert was Africa’s last major geographical mystery until the 1930s, when British traveller Wilfred Thesiger became the first European to follow the river to its end in the ‘fabled Aussa oasis’.

During two month-long camel safari’s in the oasis and surrounding mountains I discovered the forested, fertile and highly productive oasis described by Thesiger had become an environmental wasteland, severely degraded by large-scale cotton production of the 1970s. Large-scale, water-intensive cotton in the fragile oasis was an extremely high risk, brown development strategy that failed dramatically in the searing desert heat; it all turned rapidly to salt. Looking at other sections of the main Awash Valley I discovered similar stories of project failure, environmental degradation, flooding, invasive species, resource scarcity  with other ‘hidden costs’ all around, including the rapid expansion of the brown economy.

My enquiry into the vulnerable Awash Basin led to a broader look at Ethiopia’s green development process since 1992 and into Africa’s green development in general. For the past five years I have been exploring the evolving ideas surrounding the green economy in Africa.

This is Africa’s third era of hope, and while ‘this time is different’ unfortunately so much in Africa and worldwide is still the same, and in many respects is getting worse. The world and Africa are once more at a crossroads. Africa is the last frontier for investment and the new engine of global growth. The big question now is whether Africa will be the last frontier for the brown economy or the first frontier for the green? Will the new growth engine last?

 

While continuing our biosphere reserve work in Sicily, my current focus is Working Towards a Green Economy in Africa, a blog which hopes to raise awareness of the green economy in Africa and perhaps contribute in some way to its long-term growth. After observing Africa for forty years, thanks to the green economy, I can begin to see how Africa can ‘develop.’