Africa’s newest architectural miracle is a gigantic stadium in the earthy colours and shape of a calabash, the traditional cooking pot that symbolizes African village life. At night, on the Soweto horizon, it glows like the embers of a slumbering fire, waiting to be stirred into life.
On June 11, the embers will awaken. Nearly 90,000 people will crowd into Africa’s biggest stadium, known as Soccer City, for the opening ceremonies of the World Cup, the most popular sporting event on the planet, held on African soil for the first time ever.
History will approve.
The stadium was built in the apartheid era as a soccer venue, mostly for South Africa’s black population, and it was here that Nelson Mandela spoke to 100,000 adoring supporters in his first Soweto rally after his release from prison. With apartheid long dead, the stadium has sat empty for three years as workers overhauled it for Africa’s new day in the sun.
The renaissance of Soccer City marks an auspicious beginning for an era when another sleeping giant, Africa itself, is being reborn. After a year hobbled by the global slowdown, Africa is quietly preparing for a growth trajectory that could astonish the world.
Its popular image is still the same: hunger; corruption; war; poverty. But take another look. Beyond the stereotypes, Africa’s potential is explosive. Its human talents, its vast natural resources, its rising democracies and new technologies – all are reaching a tipping point that could send it surging dramatically upward.
The economy of sub-Saharan Africa is projected to grow by 4.75 per cent this year, faster than the world average, and will accelerate to an impressive 6 per cent in 2011, according to the International Monetary Fund. It will be the strongest recovery that Africa has ever managed to achieve after a global downturn, and it is testament to its greater resilience, smarter policies and growing popularity among foreign investors.
Little noticed by the world, the African economy had grown at 6 per cent annually for five years before the global slowdown. Its inflation rates and budget deficits have declined, its foreign exchange reserves have grown 30 per cent since the 1990s, and its external debt has sharply decreased. And so, when the global economy contracted last year, Africa succeeded in avoiding a decline, maintaining 2-per-cent growth even at the depths of the slowdown.
A rainbow appears behind Soccer City Stadium in Soweto, South Africa, on Nov. 30, 2009.— AFP/Getty Images
Africa’s rebirth has often been touted in the past, only to falter. Magazine covers in the late 1990s touted “Africa Rising” and “Emerging Africa.” Leaders such as U.S. president Bill Clinton toured the continent, and South African president Thabo Mbeki made passionate speeches about the “African Renaissance.” But soon the optimism was fading, and a disillusioned cover story in The Economist a decade ago dismissed Africa as “The Hopeless Continent.”
But this time is different. For the first time, Africa is becoming a bigger lure for investors than for aid donors. Africa’s poverty rate has been declining by 1 per cent annually since the 1990s, and investment is growing dramatically. A decade ago, Africa was receiving less than $5-billion (U.S.) in foreign investment annually. By 2008, it was attracting nearly $40-billion in direct foreign investment – more than it received in foreign aid. One survey found that 40 per cent of emerging-market equity investors are putting money into Africa today, compared with 4 per cent in 2006.
“I think there are great opportunities in Africa,” says Richard Maponya, one of South Africa’s most well-known black entrepreneurs, who capped a 60-year business career by building a massive $90-million shopping mall in Soweto three years ago.
