An ad in the April 2016 edition of Forbes Africa magazine has just caught my attention. It announces the 2016 edition of Africa Singapore Business Forum, scheduled for August 24-25. My first reaction was: What a cocky (or perhaps naive) deflating of the Africa brand!
As the saying goes: Africa is not a country, it is a continent. Singaporean organizers of the forum are in obvious denial of this fact. Singapore is an Asian country, but it is not Asia -- contrary to the forum's publicity stunts. It is a success story of no mean repute, yes; but, importantly, it is an island nation! It is, indeed, a city-state -- with huge ambitions. Even from outer space, Africa is not an island. Its potential and ambitions are obviously larger than Singapore's, but as yet decidedly understated
I have subsequently read elsewhere that Singapore has been hosting this discrepant gathering since 2010. But Singapore has no capacity to push the African agenda, the way it must be pushed, in any consequential way, regardless of the island's history, annual growth rate or GDP per capita. It can only push its own, in a subconscious if belated sort of scramble. It can only feed off the African promise. So a little sense of proportion, in this 21st century, will do Singapore's business and thought leaders some good; as it will do leaders from those little countries of Europe that continue to imagine that they know what's best for Africa.
So let's be friends, of course, but this condescending frame of mind is not healthy for those it possesses.
