2 The African Continent: Laboratory of Tomorrow’s World
Africa is the continent of the left-behinds, of misery, hunger and humanitarian aid, of poverty, terrorism and lack of access to safe drinking water and electricity, and of exotic creatures such as lions and elephants. It is the continent of desperate young people fleeing en masse in fear for their lives. This Africa exists. However, it masks another Africa, larger and more powerful. An Africa which is building the future and is already a reality for hundreds of millions of people, and an Africa which attracts many firms (Chironga et al. 2011). The economic growth of the African continent has been, on average, 5% per year for more than a decade, just behind Asia and far ahead of Europe. The Human Development Index has improved. More than 80% of the population is connected to a mobile telephone network. The population of Africa will double by 2050 to reach almost 2 billion individuals, which will make it one of the largest markets in the world.
We will thus evoke this Africa of possibilities in the next section, as we are very attentive to the growth of the continent and its transformations, and we think that the African continent may be the laboratory of tomorrow’s world.
At the organizational level, actors develop in a context marked by the dynamics of interweaving formal and informal dimensions (Hyden 2006; Bruton et al. 2015), as well as modern and traditional elements (North 1990; Collier 2007). These are organizations ...