Suchergebnisse

"Chapter 1 Introduction Colonialism and Africa's Future Paths The European ways were considered modern, the African old-fashioned. Lagos culture was such an unfortunate conglomeration of both that you ended up not knowing to which you belonged. Buchi Emecheta, The Bride Price (1976) This book examines past, present, and likely future paths for Nigeria and other countries in Africa through a lens of disruption. The Oxford English Dictionary defines disrupt as meaning "to break apart, burst, shatter, separate forcibly, interrupt the normal continuity of (an activity etc.) or to throw into disorder." This book combines this commonplace understanding of disruption with conceptions of disruption that have become prominent in digital economy discussions, significantly influenced by the work of Clayton Christensen. In his seminal 1997 book, The Innovator's Dilemma and later work, Christensen characterized disruptive innovation as a process "by which a product or service initially takes root in simple applications at the bottom of a market - typically by being less expensive and more accessible - and then relentlessly moves upmarket, eventually displacing established competitors." Disruptive innovation has become an influential concept in technology, finance, and other arenas, with much discussion about what constitutes a disruptive innovation. Disruption is celebrated in Silicon Valley, a global epicenter of technology disruption. This book is not an intervention into the extensive discourse about digital economy disruption. Rather, this book discusses how varied forms of disruption have had an impact in countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) in the past, the impact of such past disruptions today, and the implications and potential future paths given disruptive digital economy technologies and innovations."

Disruptive and other technologies have spread throughout Africa in recent years. Many see the digital economy as a potential new path that might enable leapfrogging that narrows economic and technological gaps between Africa and the rest of the world. Today, more than half a century after the end of colonialism, far too many remain poor in Africa. High rates of economic growth in the early years of the new millennium have decreased, while the population in many African countries is set to double between now and 2050. Unemployment and underemployment are pervasive in many African countries today.

Although the Donegal court explicitly limited its scrutiny to the legal questions raised by the case rather than questions of morality and humanity, 23 the moral and ethical considerations connected with the activities of vulture investors are significant. This is particularly true in Africa, which in the post-colonial period has experienced poor economic performance in both absolute and relative terms, as well as significant and even increasing levels of poverty.24 Poverty has exacerbated political instability in Africa.25 The political situation in much of the African continent is similarly tenuous, with sub-Saharan African states in many instances serving as exemplars of weak or failed states: "Black Africa's forty-odd states are among the weakest in the world. State institutions and organizations are less developed in the sub-Saharan region than almost anywhere else."'26 This African institutional, political, and economic context has bearing on the operation of so-called "vulture funds, which are typically private equity or hedge funds that seek to profit by repurchasing debt at a discount and then collecting from the debtor country at face value or an even higher amount. Vulture funds are not a new phenomenon.27 Although some assert that vulture funds serve an important market function by creating a liquid secondary market for developing country debt, the operation of vulture funds reflects an arbitrage of not only prices, but also legal, institutional, and political structures.28 Further, the activities of vulture funds may in fact serve to exacerbate the weaknesses of African legal, institutional, and political structures. At a minimum, the extent to which commercial activities of vulture funds and other commercial actors contribute to or exacerbate economic and political instability should be better understood.