What did not exist in 2007? Instagram, Uber and 30 of the top 100 digital multinationals. According to the World Investment Report 2017: Investment and the Digital Economy, digital is growing and it is growing fast.
Just a few years back, the business relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia was pretty simple: the Americans bought oil, and the Saudis spent much of what they earned on equipment to keep the crude flowing and on planes, tanks and missiles to protect their borders.
For the Chinese, these are uncharted waters. They will have to balance gains to the ruling elites in Islamabad and Lahore with those to the locals in Balochistan, who are more than capable of violently disrupting work on the corridor. If China fails to do so, Pakistan will end up more unstable, not less.
Chinese enterprises are going global, venturing overseas to acquire foreign companies, know-how, and technologies. While most of these activities reflect simple business decisions, others carefully and deliberately advance China’s strategic interests, perhaps against the interests of its trading partners.
Betting its fate on Pakistan with a $51-billion investment in infrastructure, China remains wary of its neighbour’s squint-eyed politicians who have proven their lack of vision over the years. Many of these politicians can’t see beyond the impending election woes.
The economy of the United States is the largest in the world. At $18 trillion, it represents a quarter share of the global economy (24.3%), according to the latest World Bank figures.
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Latin Americans can’t afford to wait four years to see when the United States will be willing to have an honest and reciprocal conversation about economic prosperity in the Western Hemisphere. Luckily for the United States’s southern neighbours, over the past decade Latin America has found a new major trading partner: China.
Other countries such as Mauritius and South Africa have been hailed as China’s gateway to Africa, but few countries have positioned themselves aggressively for the position in the way that Morocco has. Last year, the government of Morocco hosted the first Sino-African Entrepreneurs Summit in Marrakech, where Morocco later hosted the COP22 summit. Similar forums are planned in the future.
Not a shot has been fired across the India-China border since 1962, but the Indian media’s China “war” never quite ended. Border “skirmishes” and Chinese “intrusions” into Indian territory still dominate the coverage of China by Indian newspapers and television channels more than half a century on.
Africa is by no means destined to lag behind the rest of the world economy. On the contrary, it could easily become a global economic powerhouse – and within the next decade. But, to fulfill its economic potential, Africa must industrialize.
