Africa

How African wealth has grown since 2000

Last year was the first since 2008’s global financial crisis that the world saw a fall in net global household wealth, according to the latest Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report. The downturn was driven by inflation, rising interest rates and currency depreciation.

But Africa bucked that trend and saw a marginal improvement in wealth accumulation of 1.5% to $5.9 billion. However, if you measure the gains against population growth that turns it into a decline of 1.3% per adult. Given the respective slowdowns in Africa’s largest economies in 2022, it is perhaps not surprising that wealth accumulation has slowed.

What is perhaps less intuitive, according to Credit Suisse’s estimates, is that there has been a reduction in inequality across the continent over the last couple of decades given the increase in median wealth per adult which has narrowed the gap with mean wealth per adult.

But, undoubtedly, many Africans would not feel that is the way things are playing out, certainly not in Nigeria and South Africa where the data would appear to support that feeling. Both economies have been sluggish for most of the last decade and that seems to have exacerbated already high inequality in both countries.

By the end of 2022, the Gini coefficient for wealth — a measure of inequality in countries — was at 86.5 in Nigeria and 88.8 in South Africa, up from 72.1 and 80.4 in 2000, respectively. It is estimated the share of wealth of the top 1% in Nigeria was up to 44.5% from 28.3%. South Africa’s top 1% saw a less sharp rise to 42.2% from 39%, while low wealth groups have seen a steeper decline during the period.

The number of dollar millionaires on the continent rose to 361,000 by the end of 2022 compared with 32,000 in 2000, according to analysts Rodrigo Lluberas and Anthony Shorrocks who are referenced in the report. They forecast that there will be 768,000 African millionaires on the continent by 2027. That represents a growth rate of 113%, which would be the fastest creation of millionaires anywhere in the world. Though impressive, it’s worth noting China is expected to have a growth rate of 112% to reach more than 13 million millionaires in the same period.

Artists with the Keiskamma Art Project, an award-winning collective based in the seaside town of Hamburg in South Africa’s Eastern Cape, created an embroidered scene that could be transformed into a printed scenic wallpaper and textiles. Anelisa Nyongo, Nozibele Nxadi, and Cebo Mvubu, with curatorial guidance from creative director Tracy Lynch, brought the project to life by first sketching and then completing the medium-scale embroidery. It was then scanned in high resolution and turned into a wallpaper image printed by Cara Saven Wall Design. According to the directors, the aim was to make the Keiskamma Art Project’s embroidery more accessible and commercially available to a larger population.

— Muchira Gachenge

Nigerian poachers turn gamekeepers at Unesco site

At the Omo Forest Reserve, around 80 miles east of Lagos, a group of rangers are protecting the grounds where they were previously poachers.

“We had made efforts over the years to push poachers back through anti-poaching campaigns,” Emmanuel Olabode, project manager at non-profit non-governmental organization Nigerian Conservation Foundation, told Semafor Africa. When those campaigns yielded few results, the organization began an experiment in 2017 that involved integrating poachers who had voluntarily decided to quit their criminal lifestyle. Now, said Olabode, three former poachers make up a team of about 10 rangers.

The Omo Forest was the first of four habitats in Nigeria to be designated a reserve by Unesco in 1977. It holds historic significance for housing descendants of original settlers from the Ijebu region in southwest Nigeria. The operation to conserve it as a free home for elephants, chimpanzees and monkeys remains a small one, Olabode says, as the organization’s ability to recruit rangers is constrained by funding from donors.

Despite funding constraints, the strategy of enlisting repentant poachers has been a success that is reflected in the reduced frequency of poachers encountered during patrols, from about three to four every day to about one each week, he said.

Sunday Abiodun, one of the former poachers in the team of rangers, told the Associated Press why he gave up killing pangolins as part of a lucrative trade network. “I said to myself: ‘If I continue to kill these animals for money to eat now, my own children will not see them if they also want to learn about them in the future.’”

— Alexander Onukwue in Lagos

Bananas are the fourth biggest staple crop in Malawi after maize, rice and cassava. And they are grown in abundance as well. The zitumbuwa is a banana fritter (also known as vitumbuwa in Zambia, vibama in Kiswahili ) that was born as a way to preserve bananas in a different form and over time it became a favorite snack. Traditionally, zitumbuwa was made from very ripe and sweet bananas.

The banana fritter, which is often eaten for breakfast, is typically made from corn flour, bananas, sugar and then deep fried. For variety, some people use other ingredients such as whole wheat flour, milk, eggs, and butter.

Out here in Lilongwe you can buy a few fritters as a snack for much less than $1. The affordability probably explains why you would find people lining up for the snack in marketplaces and locations where women with baskets are found, ready to sell to people who want to have it with a cup of tea.

— Charles Pensulo in Lilongwe, Malawi

🇺🇬 A generation of Ugandan long-distance runners is emerging around the Mount Elgon region, thanks in part to a new camp completed in December by the Olympic and World champion runner Joshua Cheptegei. One of his country’s leading athletes, Cheptegei has taken on the duty of bridging the talent and performance gaps that have seen neighbors Kenya share the most coveted honors in long distance running with Ethiopia. “The Mount Elgon region has always been home to running talent, and we’re only just beginning to showcase it,” Cheptegei told the New York Times.

🇨🇩 This year marks 78 years since the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945, ending World War II. However, Africa’s role in making of the bomb has been suppressed, argues Victoria Audu. He writes in The Republic that “a large amount” of uranium used in making the first atomic weapons was sourced from a mine in DR Congo. Local laborers produced the uranium for the U.S and the mine was erased from maps to prevent other powers from discovering it.

🇸🇱 In Sierra Leone, African Americans who traced their roots to the West African country are being given citizenship based on DNA tests showing their ancestral ties — becoming the first African country to do so, writes Adama Munu for Okayafrica. It has paved the way for “hundreds of thousands of Black people in the diaspora” to discover their links to African ethnic groups or present-day nation-states, after slavery severed those ties.

🇿🇲 Under President Hakainde Hichilema’s stewardship, Zambia is seeking to triple the country’s copper production from about 800,000 tonnes a year to more than 3 million by 2032. It comes as the world embraces clean energy. Achieving this goal would mean surpassing the current output of DR Congo, which is Africa’s largest copper producer. Joseph Cotterill in the Financial Times avers that such ambitious plans would require the southern African country “to attract deep pockets for new exploration but also investors with the appetite to turn around old underground mines.”

🇨🇳 Major Chinese social media platforms do not routinely address racist content, according to analysis of hundreds of videos and posts by Human Rights Watch. Platforms including Bilibili, Douyin, Kaishou, Weibo, and Xiaohongshu featured videos which portrayed Black people through offensive racial stereotypes, the report said. It includes videos by African-based Chinese social media influencers portraying Africans as impoverished and Chinese as saviors. Other videos denigrated interracial relationships with Black people, who netizens accused of “contaminating” the Chinese race.

🗓️ Brazil’s President Lula, India’s Prime Minister Modi, and China’s President Xi will join South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa for the 15th BRICS Summit in Johannesburg. After much speculation, Russia is expected to be represented in person by foreign minister Sergey Lavrov with President Vladmir Putin staying at home. (Aug. 22-24)

🗓️ The world’s largest floating book fair, MV Logos Hope, will dock at the Kenyan port of Mombasa on her maiden voyage, offering more than 5,000 different book titles. (Aug. 21-Oct. 4)

🗓️ Zimbabweans will vote for a president, members of parliament, and councilors on Wednesday. If there is no outright winner in the presidential contest, a run-off will be held on Oct. 2. (Aug. 23)

🗓️ After South Africa, Brazil’s President Lula will visit DR Congo for the G3 Climate Summit on protecting the world’s major tropical rainforests. (Aug. 25)

🗓️ Gabon will vote in presidential, legislative and municipal elections on Saturday. The 19 presidential candidates include the incumbent, Ali Bongo Ondimba. (Aug. 26)

• A quarter of the world’s population lives on the brink of running out of water, according to new analysis — with sub-Saharan Africa the worst hit region.
• Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt is building an ambitious new organization to tackle scientific challenges with the help of AI.
• A new poll finds that the legal troubles faced by former U.S. president Donald Trump could prove fatal in a general election.

If you’re enjoying the Semafor Africa newsletter and finding it useful, please share with your family, friends, elite Ugandan distance runners and poachers turned gamekeepers. We’d love to have them aboard, too.

You can reply to this email and send us your news tips, gossip, street food recommendations and good vibes.

— Yinka, Alexis, Alexander Onukwue, and Muchira Gachenge.