IFF and Digitalisation

Over the past few decades, we have seen an emerging form of neoliberal discourses on Africa that focus on emergence, as the continent has moved from being framed as the world’s “problem case” to the exciting new frontier of “Africa Rising". This has pushed neoliberal capitalists to see Africa as a continent of the future that is about to achieve transformations and socio-economic progress if it follows the orthodox advice of opening its market and accepting negative integration into the world economy. However, fuelled heavily by GDP growth rates, the “rising” narrative has been adept at obscuring a reality of widening wealth inequality and persistent poverty among the majority sections of the continent’s population even while witnessing the emergence of mega shopping malls and cell phones in almost every hand. Additionally, the myth of an Africa that achieves growth has overshadowed the quality of this growth as it does not lead to an improvement in the living conditions of Africans but instead breeds illicit financial flows (IFFs).