I was only 7 years old at the time, but I still have clear memories of driving with my grandmother (Ouma, as we call her in Afrikaans) to drop off our domestic worker, Katrina, at the squatter camp, just a ten minute drive from the outskirts of Springfontein, a small town in the Western Cape province of South Africa. My brother and I got out of the car to meet Katrina’s family. Everyone was fascinated with us, first because so few white people ventured into the squatter camps, and secondly because we were two boys who lived in America.In a matter of moments, we had a big crowd gathered to meet us, and I was overwhelmed with smiles and joy that seemed to exude from random strangers I had never met. I was also met with the overwhelming smells as people handed me their babies to hold, and glanced curiously at the shacks that each of the people were emerging from. At that point, the prospect of living in a house like that seemed like an adventure, like living in one of the club houses that I had built in the backyard. As it began to get dark, we climbed back in the car and drove home.
I was too young to understand the socioeconomic factors that had caused the clear evidence of such poverty, but the stark abundance of poverty became a reality to me from a young age. I saw the reality of growth miracles like South Korea and Japan, and strongly believe that with the right understanding, education, and approach, African nations will be able to experience similar growth and alleviation of large scale poverty.
Mozambique is a prime example of an African nation with the fifth lowest GDP in the world (Top 20 Lowest GDP Countries, 2020). Although the nation contains natural wealth and fertile soil to build up its agricultural capabilities, Mozambique’s history is rife with regime changes, victims of the Cold War through proxy altercations, and a 17-year long civil war, which only came to an end in 1992, marked with their re-joining of the Commonwealth in 1995 (Sheldon, n.d.). With a path to long-term peace feasible, the conversation can now turn towards empowering the informal economy to enlarge their efforts and create businesses to scale, through the clear presence of resources and dire need for entrepreneurs. Although each African country is vastly different, perhaps the start to one nation’s growth miracle will encourage and inspire other nations to do the same, and create at least some semblance of a model that other nations can use to institute this in their nations as well.
Although there have been major changes in South Africa since I was a 7 year-old, my dream is to see the type of sustainable entrepreneurship and stable income in every area of South Africa, partnered by an ownership and desire to grow wealth and steward it well, and I would like to be a part, even if a small one, in that process.
References:
Sheldon, K. E. (n.d.). Mozambique | Culture, History, & People. Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved September 4, 2021, from https://www.britannica.com/place/Mozambique
Top 20 lowest GDP countries. (2020). Statista. Retrieved September 3, 2021, from https://www.statista.com/statistics/256547/the-20-countries-with-the-lowest-gdp-per-capita/
Your writing was very intriguing if I might say. While I whole heartedly support Africa's Growth as a whole to become a richer nation and to get out of the poverty threshold. Something I might add is if poverty is such a problem then what's the solution. In realty there is really no wrong answer to this question, I just felt this would have added flavor to the piece.