AFRICA: BEYOND 2000.

As you read this, we will have entered a new Christian millennium. Even if the effect is only psychological, it nevertheless symbolises the end of one period of history and the beginning of another. How will this new chapter in the life of man unfold for Africa? African Business is devoting considerable space this month to look at Africa's possible future. In the article that follows, Editor Anver Versi scans Africa's history over the past 2000 years to arrive at a projection for the future. Tom Nevin looks at various sectors in Africa to reach his conclusions.

Dawn of a new age

As glasses are raised and, one hopes, prayers offered around the world to welcome the new millennium, it is time to take stock of what history has done to Africa over the past 2,000 years. At the outset, we should remind ourselves that OUT species, mankind, first made its appearance in Africa approximately one million years ago. From here, mankind spread, over a vast period of time to populate virtually ever corner of the world. The original man was African. As human beings dispersed, they slowly and gradually changed to adapt to their new environment and modes of living. This gave them particular and peculiar physical characteristics - and it is these characteristics that today we call races.

It was the ways and means by which people faced the challenges of survival in whatever environments they found themselves that shaped the characters and cultures of the various peoples who inhabit the world today.

Despite our common ancestry, like contentious children from the same parents, we have always waged wars against each other and coveted each others possessions. The history of mankind over the last two thousand years is the history of the relationships and conflicts among members of the same family. It is the history of the rise and fall of civilisations.

The greatest civilisation of antiquity, the civilisation that set the parameters of all our achievements to this day, was that of Egypt. The Egyptian was indeed, the mother of all civilisations.

Historian Basil Davidson wrote, "Predominantly African in its human and cultural origins, this civilisation (Egyptian) became much later, but then in important formative ways, the parent of the civilisation of the Greeks, most notably in the fields of philosophy, mathematics and religious thought. These African origins of Greek civilisation were afterwards obscured and denied by the rise of Eurocentric racism after the early decades of the 19th Century AD, but modern archeology and historiography have amply confirmed them. They were, in any case, accepted by the Classical Greeks themselves."

So if Western civilisation rests on the pillars of Greek civilisation, Greek civilisation itself rests on the foundations of African civilisation. Therefore the roots of modern Western civilisation are to be found in African soil. That both Egypt and Greece have lost their pre-eminent positions in the world is neither here nor there. Without Egypt, there would have been no Greece and without Greece there would have been no modern Western civilisation.

I mention this not out of a desire to 'revert to a glorious past' but merely to place matters in a historically correct context since we are talking about events over the preceding millennia.

The intervening period was characterised by two major developments: the rise of empires based on military power; and the growth of monotheistic religions, particularly Islam and Christianity. These developments occurred more or less concurrently in Africa, Europe and Asia.

Both these developments had one major effect. They brought large numbers of previously unconnected people together. The military empires, whether Roman or Malian, ranged over vast geographical areas; and religion incorporated huge numbers under common moral and spiritual umbrellas.

For the military empires to work efficiently, new forms of economic activities became necessary. Land was seized from peasant farmers who then became virtual slaves, producing to feed armies. Skilled metal workers and carpenters were employed to make ever more powerful weapons and masons and brickmakers created the mighty cities whose ruins we can see even today.

But the most important lubricant in the imperial machinery was trade. In Africa, trade, carried out often over vast distances, had already reached very sophisticated levels in centres like Timbuktu. Money, in the form of promissory notes written in Arabic, and cowrie shells, was already in use; and banking systems, using gold as the standard of value, financed most of the long-distance trade. Carthage, near the site of modern day Tunisia was already minting coins acceptable throughout the magreb and southern Europe. The Islamic influence in north, west, east and Sudanic Africa spawned scores of universities which taught mathematics, medicine, science, the arts and theology.

There was heavy trading between the eastern African seaboard and India, China and the Arabian Gulf. Overland trade routes which began on the west African seaboard culminated in what is now Iraq, Iran and Turkey. From here goods were shipped to Venice which supplied the rest of Europe.

It was at this stage that there was a major turning point. The development of military power varied with the need to use might. Most of the African empires, having established their sovereignty, faced only occasional opposition. These they were often able to deal with without too much effort. Instead, they devoted a lot of their energies to civic matters and intellectual pursuits.

In Europe the situation was very different. When the Roman empire collapsed, the vacuum was filled by hundreds of contesting armies which began carving out chunks of territory. We don't have space to go into details at this point, but suffice it to say that the medieval wars, 'The Hundred Years' War', and their likes generated, a degree of ferocity and bloodshed that had never been seen before. It also led to the invention of newer, far more deadly weapons and more ruthless warfare strategies.

At the same time, military might depended on control of trade routes and vital supplies from Asia and Africa. It was in order to secure these supplies that the great voyages of exploration were undertaken and in due course, Columbus stumbled upon America.

From securing trade routes, European powers graduated to 'securing' sources of supplies. In other words, the era of colonisation had begun. It was relatively easy for the heavily armed European forces to subdue isolated African communities. They faced far greater opposition when confronted by African kingdoms.

This colonial process was different from the earlier method of empire building in which communities and lands seized were incorporated into the empire. The new colonial empires were far removed from the centres and were used purely for the extraction of material. As a natural outcome of this approach, local populations were brutalised, humiliated and culturally destroyed.

The settlement of America, which involved virtually wiping out the local population, created the need for 'serf'-type labour in a land in which there were no serfs. These new 'serfs' or slaves were brought out of Africa by a system that produced unprecedented wealth for those engaged in it. The impact on Africa was terrible. The trade not only took away the most productive members of society, it destroyed social cohesion and scattered African peoples to the four corners.

The most profound impact of colonisation was to sever Africans from their cultural, economic and political roots and thus try to render them a people with no history and therefore no future.

At the end of the colonial period, Africans found themselves corralled into artificial nation states that often bore no resemblance whatsoever to ethnic or cultural configurations. In addition, Africans were expected to organise themselves into European-type nation states and govern those states along western political systems. They not only had no experience whatsoever of this new regime but were immediately faced with a number of serious problems.

To give one example. Under colonisation, most Africans were stripped of their lands which were often communally owned. Under capitalism, which they were required to adopt, there was a clear distinction between private ownership and state ownership. Thus a great deal of early political struggle took place over obtaining title deeds to land. The ability to do business depended on how much capital an individual possessed. Since very few Africans owned capital at independence, the race to acquire capital and hence land and other productive processes began in earnest. This struggle polarised around political parties and groupings. Political power was thus an opportunity to get to the sources of capital - and corruption followed.

Role of multinationals

The role of multinationals in post-independence Africa has also been profound. Multinationals, with large capital bases and modern production methods, were always going to be more competitive than indigenous entrepreneurs who were starting from point zero. So, while multinationals had considerable negotiating leverage, government officials, acting as gate-keepers, could also exercise a degree of influence. This led to the cult of '10%' demanded by officials for multinational projects.

While the struggle for the means of production continued, often degenerating into bloody conflicts, the lot of the common man remained stagnant or worsened. Despite this however, most African governments modernised their countries, built schools and hospitals and certainly brought huge numbers of indigenes into the formal economy from which they had been barred before independence. That not enough people have been brought into the formal economy remains a major problem.

I realise that the above is little more than a rapid sketch of Africa's economic history over the last two thousand years, but in essence, I believe it is correct.

So what does the new millennium have in store for Africa? I believe that the second chapter of Africa's development, the tooth and nail struggle for the means of production, is now drawing to a dose. In countries where there has been political stability, substantial middle classes have developed and obtaining capital for business is becoming less dependent on political power. Education and the spread of the media, particularly radio, has empowered the masses sufficiently for them to make effective demands on governments. The result is the rapidly increasing acceptance of democracy and transparency. International donors and NGOs have also accepted that development models based on Western experiences have generally failed and are now more prepared to consider alternative models based on indigenous cultures, experiences and expectations.

Fresh Perspective

Throughout this transitional period, large numbers of Africans have travelled abroad to study and work. This has given them a fresh perspective on their own countries and many are now returning to offer their skills to their own people.

The industrialisation of Africa, which has been neglected over the past 40 years, is now back on the agenda - with the driving force coming from the highly industrialised South Africa. It is conceivable that, as happened in south east Asia 25 years ago, Africa's industrialisation will show an exponential growth over the next 25 years. Electronic and digital communication will probably prove to be Africa's greatest ally as countries strive to achieve very high growth rates.

Africa's leadership structures are also moving away from the personality cults of earlier decades as diverse populations begin to accept new national definitions of themselves.

Although development will be patchy, with some countries moving rapidly ahead while others are bogged down in civil conflicts, there seems to be no reason to doubt that the next century will belong to Africa.

AFRICA'S ECONOMY

Time for a rethink

A question that will be asked a million times in Africa is whether or not capitalism has failed it. The collapse of communism and the Soviet empire also meant the end to socialist systems throughout Africa as a precondition of help from the West. The option was either to dismantle socialist political platforms and be economically reconstructed, or die slowly in poverty and isolation. It was never a matter of choices, it was always one of survival.

For many, to look back over two decades of economic reconstruction reveals none of the prosperity promised by capitalist intervention and a look forward into 2000 and beyond is scarier still - except for the very few who are on the right side of the rapidly widening chasm that divides the handful of very rich and the millions of very poor.

The fact that Africa was caught in the middle of the Cold War didn't help; while it was fun and profitable at the time to play East and West against the middle, it turned out to be a no-win game, the proof of which is to be found in the debris of Africa today. But there's hope in every phoenix's ashes and the globalising economy offers Africa opportunity for economic recovery and progress like never before.

Off-target advice?

In recent years developing countries have striven hard, and often at considerable cost, to integrate more closely into the world economy. "But," says the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), "in the face of deep-seated imbalances in economic power and systemic biases in international trading and Financial systems, their expectations of the gains from such integration in terms of faster growth, greater employment opportunities and reduced levels of poverty have been disappointed.

"The 20th century is closing on a note of crisis and a growing sense of unease about the policy advice that was proffered in the last decade."

Much of that advice was fashioned in response to the debt crisis of the early 1980s, when a reorientation of policies in the industrial countries led to considerable macroeconomic distress in many developing countries and a sharp fall in their growth rates. Few had anticipated the extent to which rapid growth in countries in the South had come to depend on steadily rising export earnings and capital inflows and just how disruptive any interruption to these sources of foreign exchange could be.

For many the crisis was final proof that inward-oriented growth strategies and interventionist policies could not extract developing countries from the mire of poverty and underdevelopment.

Looking for answers

Another solution was called for. That solution was believed to lie in financial liberalisation, which would attract foreign capital seeking high returns in these capital scarce countries, allowing them to invest more than they saved without running into a payments constraint. The thinking presumed that a bigger inflow of foreign direct investment would further accelerate growth not only by supplementing domestic resources for capital accumulation, but also through transfer of technology and organisational skills.

"However," says UNCTAD, "few attempts have been made to examine what rapid integration has actually meant for developing countries. (Our) analysis shows that the empirical record has been at odds with the promises. Inevitably, the discussion involves 'nuts and bolts' economics of a technical nature, but the conclusion is a simple and striking one. It is that after more than a decade of liberal reforms in developing countries, their payments disorders, which had earlier ushered in a rethinking of policies, remain as acute as ever, and their economies depend even more on external financial resources for the achievement of growth rates sufficient to tackle the deep-rooted problems of poverty and underdevelopment."

With the globalisation of financial markets, it was presumed that access to private capital would kickstart growth in developing regions. And this proved to be correct, although only partly so.

The 1990s saw a rapid expansion of private capital inflows into developing countries - an increase of seven times over the 1970s average - although the spread of the investment was desperately unbalanced.

"As official financing took a back seat, capital inflows have increasingly been concentrated in a small group of 20 or so emerging markets which received over 90% of total capital inflows in the 1990s, compared to about 50% before the eruption of the debt crisis," reports UNCTAD. "As regards foreign direct investment (FDI) China, Brazil and Mexico together accounted for almost a half of the total inflow; their per capita inflow, in the range of $20-$80, and an inflow of as much as $223 per capita in Malaysia, stand in stark contrast to under $5 in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa."

The developing world, and especially Africa, needs to build from the bottom up; it needs to start new industries and commercial enterprises. Building on what is already there is a small part of the solution.

As UNCTAD notes: "Even the strong growth of FDI flows to developing countries in the 1990s should not be allowed to hide the simple fact that it largely reflects mergers and acquisitions (rather than greenfield investment), which accounted for well over half of the total FDI inflow between 1992-97 and for almost three-quarters if China is excluded."

Compounding the problem is the fact that much of this merger activity was in service sectors, and has the potential to add to payment difficulties.

The price of liberalisation

With liberal trading regimes now in place throughout much of the developing world, growth sucks in a greater volume of imports than in the past. Attempts to close the payments gap through increased exports runs up against sluggish markets, adverse movements in the terms of trade and protectionism. Accordingly, maintaining growth momentum increasingly relies on attracting foreign capital, of any kind.

"Dependence on hot money has thus become the unstable pillar of economic growth and development in many countries," cautions UNCTAD. "This situation contrasts with the post-war experience of liberalisation in industrial countries, where the process was a gradual one and was underpinned by exceptionally strong growth."

So a radical rethink is called for as we cross the millennium threshold. Policies and responsibilities need to be revisited to involve those of the world's richest countries as well as of the developing ones. The international community must face up to the pronounced external constraints to development and the need for exports rather than unstable capital flows to underpin a return to rapid and sustained growth in the third world.

Learning from experience

Africa has learned a lot in the last half-century of the last millennium and if it applies that knowledge, then the year 2000 will open a new age of enhanced development and prosperity. Despite its negative international image, Africa's per capita income has been on the rise since 1994, although it still lags behind other developing regions.

While it's true that some African countries have been characterised by economic depression, military conflicts, unstable political regimes and mounting social and health problems, it is also a fact that positive developments have been happening in Africa that are highly relevant for foreign direct investors but that are seldom reported and nor widely known.

A number of African countries have initiated economic reforms aimed at increasing the role of the private sector - privatisation, for instance. Other examples include measures to bring about macroeconomic stability through the devaluation of over-valued national currencies, and the reduction of inflation rates and budget deficits.

Contrary to common perception, FDI in Africa is no longer concentrated in the primary sector. Even in oil-producing countries, services and manufacturing are key sectors for FDI. This new and rather unexpected picture is confirmed by the data of the most important home countries for FDI into Africa in the 1990s.

The price of progress

Foreign direct investment is the lifeblood for meaningful and rapid progress. It is the foreign capital that makes Africa its home that will expand the industrial and commercial sectors and propel Africa into the global village. But there's a price to pay.

Countries will have to make every effort to ensure political and economic stability accompanied by private sector development and the promotion of public-private dialogue, and more prudent macroeconomic management. Removal of as much red tape as possible is fundamental to FDI as is promotion of investment benefits such as tax holidays and other perks. (Namibia and Botswana have slashed the red tape and made their environments openly and aggressively investor-friendly, and are reaping the rewards today). As market size is one of FDI's most important determinants, efforts to increase consumption through the creation of regional markets would make Africa more attractive to market-seeking FDI projects. Countries that attract sufficient amounts of FDI relative to their size should pay more attention to the quality of the investment and seek to enhance its developmental impact.

The opening years of the millennium should be devoted to changing the negative and stereotypical picture of Africa which still prevails among large areas of the international business community. It is fundamental to increasing FDI flows into the continent. FDI into Africa will only be stimulated when it becomes clear to investors that Africa offers many attractive and worthwile investment opportunities.

SA - investor or imperialist?

South Africa will continue to be Africa's biggest investor, reaching into virtually every corner of the continent to involve itself in mining, agriculture, manufacture, petrochemical and financial services. In the first few heady years of readmittance into the international community, South Africans rushed to establish themselves in first world markets, but many underestimated the competition or overestimated their capabilities and found the going too heavy to handle. Most have realised they know Africa best and turned their attention to the north.

The South African Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) has earmarked R2.5bn to pursue projects in Mozambique, Namibia and Zimbabwe; South Africa's big four banks are reaching ever northwards to establish themselves from the Cape to Cairo; Anglo American and Anglogold (and other South African mining houses) have mining interests continent-wide; Illovo is growing and milling sugar in east, west and north Africa; South African Breweries is building breweries and acquiring others in the most unlikely of African states; Sasol is moving into Nigeria's petrochemical industry in a big way. Telecommunications giant Telkom and mammoth power provider Eskom have claimed all of the African continent as their home turf.

The timing of South Africa's return from the political wilderness could not have been better if it had been planned. It ideally suited South Africa, coming as it did when most African nations were forced to liberalise their economies and allow unfettered foreign involvement, scrap foreign exchange controls (while South Africa maintains many of its own) and sell off state assets. South Africa was cash flush and hungry for corporate and institutional expansion.

While many African states welcome South African investment and technological input, others - notably Zimbabwe and Kenya - are becoming alarmed at the rapid pervasion of the South African commercial and industrial presence, and its reluctance to put in place what they consider equitable trade tariff structures. Apart from Borswana and Namibia, where South African companies are setting up manufacturing operations to escape their country's strict tax and labour laws and cash in on their neighbours' more investor-friendly environment (and gain access to their preferential trade deals with the EU and the USA), South African investment elsewhere is largely at the primary level, or in financial services almost exclusively aimed at the lucrative local and multinational corporate market.

This in turn has attracted charges of South Africa becoming Africa's new economic imperialist, using its money and its muscle to suborn its African family of nations. Such resentment is unlikely to ease in the early years of the 21st century, especially as African nations battle each other for trade concessions and retreat into regional economic blocs.

AFRICA & THE NEW ECONOMY

IT as the saviour?

Africa is feeling the First rumbles of the New Economy explosion that will change forever the way we do business with each other in Africa and the world. Not long after the Christian epoch turns 2000, the effects of the New Economy will increasingly be felt throughout the continent. It's already happening in a serious way in the first world and Africa is (again) catching up, although this may be the last time it will have to do that, in technological terms at any rate.

What is the New Economy?

"It's all about connectivity through the Internet," says Africa's leading specialist and proponent on the New Economy, Rudi Kruger, chairman of Espial Consulting in Johannesburg. "It's being a point and a strand on a vast web connecting millions of computers around the globe and being one of more than 160m users doing global deals every second and at a fraction of the cost in the old economy. It's about access to world markets; it's about a wave of information so immense and wide-reaching that it's becoming a science to filter out only what you need. Trying to absorb data today is like trying to a drink from a fire-hose."

World-wide, seven new people gain access to the Internet every second and if that rate is maintained (the better bet is that it will increase) then there will be a billion people talking to each other on the net by the year 2005.

What are they doing there? Of one thing you can be sure, a lot of them are making money in many different ways. The World Wide Web is so diverse and wide reaching that it's anyone's guess where it will end, if it ever does. You can buy and sell virtually anything from anyone anywhere.

Africa's golden opportunity

What will make Africa easier and cheaper to do business with and more difficult to unfairly exploit is an unstoppable convergence from the compass points of cyber technology: the computer, telephone, cellular networks, the Internet and sooner rather than later, television.

Standing in the way of this voice and data revolution-in-waiting are the stare and parastatal telecommunication corporations. The convergence can only happen once the telecommunications environment has been deregulated.

Sun Microsystems' Mike Law says the message is clear - convergence of networks is the way forward. Money is the driving force behind the convergence trend. Separate voice and data networks are costly to operate and logic says they should be operated together.

"Traditional telecoms companies that have always derived the bulk of their income from voice traffic generally have separate networks for voice and data," says Dimension Data's global services director, Etienne Reinecke. "But with the explosion of data services in the late 90s, data revenues started to exceed voice revenues. For the first time, traditional telecoms business started to acknowledge the threat - and the business benefits - of convergence."

What does all of this mean to the budding entrepreneur in Africa? Quite simply that for the first time ever, technology is on the threshold of actually benefiting business in the third world, rather than holding it to ransom. How? Through connectivity .- efficiently, extensively and cheaply the business person in Africa will literally have the world at his or her fingertips. All they will need is access to the Internet. And while that in itself has been limited, Internet connectivity will soon be even more ubiquitous than the public phone booth.

Mass Internet access soon a reality

A public access cyber-terminal system designed to open the Internet and other online activity to millions of South Africans has been launched in Johannesburg by a consortium of local and international investors and operators.

In a foreign investment deal, Public Access Technology.com USA (PAT), is considering a local investment of R2Om to partner a South African company - Public Access Technology.com SA - in the manufacture and roll-out of the public access terminals in South Africa.

The company, will offer South Africans countrywide global access to the Internet, web, web TV, free e-mail and other information services, paid for by a debit/credit-based smart card or a coin-operated mechanism.

"Global data-streaming will be generated through satellite connectivity and existing communications in SA," says Rudi Kruger, director of the operation. "We intend rolling out 100 locally manufactured units a month from January next year. The units will be manufactured in SA and distributed both locally and internationaly."

Over 250,000 units are in operation throughout the United States. "A deal has secured an order of 800 units to be delivered over the next 12 months," says Kruger. "The operation is specifically geared to allow clients of microlenders to apply for loans via user smart cards. The user's details will already have been captured on his card, allowing for virtually immediate processing of the loan."

Access debit/credit cards will initially be issued to government and workers- union members which make up the biggest numbers in the microlending industry, but access will not be limited to this sector.

"Our strategy is to be everywhere, offer the best services and become an indispensable part of every public facility and hospitality centre in the world," says Kruger. "The public access terminals will offer smaller businesses a platform and hold further benefit for other sectors, such as education and health."

Fail-safe system

The system is described as a fail-safe, self diagnosing unit with components designed for the public access market. The operating system is built around Microsoft Windows technology, say the makers, with a hardware controller designed to prevent unauthorised access.

Notes Kruger: "The PATLink.com system provides a hacker-proof environment and a secure business platform. Only the approved user can access sensitive information. For smaller businesses and the public this means access to e-mail and the Internet without the need for infrastructure investment and, for special vertical industries, an instant solution based on direct access and transactions being enabled via the Internet and existing service providers."

The US company estimates that PAT's internationally patented terminals each generate an average income of around $50 a day. "By adding advertising to the mix," says Kruger, "PAT projects a doubling of revenues.

Importance of information

"Information has become the world's most important resource," notes Kruger. "World business has moved rapidly from being labour intensive, capital intensive, technology intensive; now it's information intensity that makes global commerce spin.

"What makes that such good news for Africa is that never has such an important resource been so accessible and affordable."

Kruger tells a story to illustrate the power of information management at grassroots level. He recalls sitting at a pavement cafe one mid-morning. At an adjacent table a very well-dressed, obviously wealthy man was having his shoes shined by a raggedly clad urchin. A cellphone rang. The call wasn't for the rich man. The shoeshine boy removed a handheld from his tattered jacket, spoke into it briefly and continued vigorously shining his customer's shoes. A few minutes later, another urchin appeared carrying a pair of shoes in need of a shine. When he was free, the lad buffed up the footwear, gave them back to the courier who ran off to deliver them. He returned a little later with some coins which were split between cleaner and runner.

"I realised that I'd witnessed the basics of information management at work," relates Kruger. "Cellphones have become extremely cheap and will probably reach the stage where they'll be given away for nothing - all the user will pay for will be the calls. The shoeshine boy had one and so did the runner. It was the runner's job to drum up business for the shoeshine boy who had the 'infrastructure' - the polish and brushes - to do the work; the runner was paid for sales and distribution."

Pretty soon the network would grow to a neighbourhood-wide, then suburb-wide and eventually city-wide business.

Wireless - the next generation

The technology threatening to make the biggest waves is a new generation of wireless communication known as universal mobile telecommunications systems. Its ability to provide multimedia services - among them Internet access and video telephony - to customers on the move is likely to make it an integral part of second generation cellular networks.

"Consider that traditional fixed line telecoms are under threat from the Internet," says technology watcher Sasha Planting. "Then consider the estimate that in five years' time more people may have access to the Internet through mobile terminals than over fixed lines. Add to this the results of a study by the European telecoms industry which indicates that data traffic will overtake voice on mobile networks by 2005."

If logic prevails, the two technologies will integrate and provide communications technology that will drive the industry well into the 21st century.

EDUCATION

Is the gap closing?

Elsewhere in this survey on Africa Beyond 2000 we talk euphorically of the tremendous opportunity being presented by the New Economy technology. But there is another side to the issue and that is the fact of basic education being denied to millions of Africa's young people. It is a state of affairs that exists through a lack of founds, an absence of political will and widespread corruption and greed.

Compared with Singapore, the world's most competitive nation, the countries of Africa, South Africa included, are singularly backward. Singapore set aside $2bn to make sure every child in the country had his or her own computer. In Africa entire schools have never seen a computer, let alone each classroom or, more remote still, each child. It gets worse.

Not an impossble dream

In South Africa, for example, the wealthiest of the continent's countries, many schools lack textbooks, half don't have electricity and all are facing budget cuts. A computer is an impossible dream. But it should not be. Not for South Africa or for any other country in Africa.

Vis Naidoo, director of the Centre for Educational Technology and Distance Education, is concerned that many schools don't have basic equipment. "To prepare children for the information society we need to ensure that they get access to technology that will help them develop those skills," he says.

A key project of the Centre is School-Net SA - a collaborative venture between the departments of education, communication, trade and industry, arts, culture and science and technology. The project helps connect schools to the Internet to support teaching, provides e-mail and trouble-shooting, teacher training on Internet use and arranges projects between local and international schools. So far 21 schools are listed on the School-Net site (www.school.za) and nearly all are independent.

Technology will never replace the teacher

The have/have-not gap is as evident in Africa's education environment as it is anywhere. Some private schools have already switched to laptops from PCs and the time's not far off for them to download their homework assignments to their teachers. For the great majority of pupils, just having electricity is still a dream. Money for instructional material will always be in short supply as long as 90% of education budgets is spent on teachers' and bureaucrats' salaries and perks.

Educator Brent Hucheson says, however, that technology must be seen for what it is: an aid, albeit a very valuable one. "Teachers must understand that a computer is an aid and how they use it will determine how successful it is. We don't believe computers can replace the teacher but they can be the best aid we've ever had because they're interactive and can be customised."

In South Africa alone there are 2m educated young people who cannot get jobs because they do not have access to the kind of learning opportunities that would make getting a job easier. What is needed is an affordable after-school bridge that would take them closer to university entrance requirements, gaining the skills that would make them attractive to employers or able to start their own business. South Africa has started experimenting with an advanced FET (Further Education and Training) system that will act as a ladder between leaving school and finding work.

"Of the 4m unemployed people in South Africa, about 50% are aged between 16 and 27," according to Glen Fisher, the National Business Initiative's director of education and training. "Many of them have completed nine or more years of schooling, but have never had a proper job."

Computer-speak a dying language?

Computer literacy is a prerequisite for school leavers entering higher-paying employment markets, but as a language it could become as redundant as Latin before it. The daunting cost of networking the continent through computers may be overtaken by satellite-fed, voice-activated cellphones connecting the lowliest bush village with the New York Stock Exchange and a billion other points besides.

So what should Africa's young people be learning to close the information gap? Progressive educationalists are urging developing countries to concentrate on the three Rs - writing, reading and arithmetic - as the basis for getting ready for the digital revolution. Affordable, perhaps free, hi-tech teaching aids are on the way to propel Africa's children into the next century, and they must be prepared for them.

Basic education, especially in English and maths, is vital. If computers are available to enhance that process, all the better. But being able to understand numbers and what the rest of the world is saying will do much to launch Africa into a more prosperous and stable millennium. And be ready for the wireless revolution when it comes - a lot sooner than most of us realise.

BANKING IN AFRICA

Hangover remains

The last century has been unkind to most of Africa's homegrown banks. Local African banks tend to have short lifespans, crashing in some cases soon after opening their doors. This in turn led to a situation where those foreign banks brave enough to operate in Africa ate being rewarded with breathtaking profits. Why can't African banks be the same and is there any hope of improvement after 2000?

For one thing, Africa's banking environment is not only risky but, like other sectors, operates in choppy economic seas, including poor infrastructure such as inadequate telecommunications and frequent power outages.

"The weakness of local banks is a hangover from decades of government ownership and interference in the sector," according to financial services commentator Jabulani Sikhakhane. "Most governments either nationalised or tightened state control of banks soon after independence. Undue interference in the workings of the banking system, including governments' attempts to regulate which sectors banks should lend to, hampered the banking sector's ability to assess business risk. It also resulted in an inadequate regulatory infrastructure. Even where they existed, prudent bank lending regulations were likely to fall foul of government directives."

Although most African governments have loosened their control of the banking sector, the ability of local banks to develop sound loan portfolios is still limited by stagnant economic growth.

These conditions have kept some international banks away, ensuring that the arena is dominated by a few institutions - among them UK groups Standard Chartered and Barclays, and South Africa's Standard Bank Investment Corporation, Absa and First National and Citibank from the US. HSBC Equator Bank is a joint venture between South Africa's Nedcor and UK's HSBC.

"The fact that there are only a few competent players has reduced the level of interbank competition," notes Sikhakhane. "Locally owned banks are hamstrung by lack of skills and capital - so multinational companies and wealthy individuals prefer to deal with sophisticated foreign banks."

Corporate focus

Those foreign banks that have led the charge into Africa, spearheaded by South African ones, follow the corporate cash - some at the behest of giant corporations setting up shop in an underdeveloped financial management environment. Where foreign banks operate, they focus on the corporate side of the business, leaving the retail sector to be handled by the domestic players. Most bankers will tell you that they prefer corporate accounts because of the much richer pickings they offer. Most African banks are doing well if they can curtail cost to income to 70%, while corporate managers are disappointed with 30%. So there's no doubt where the money is and that is where most foreign banks do their business.

Foreign banks in Africa, and including South African banks, have an immediate edge over the domestic competition. They are owned internationally and are thus well capitalised, more highly skilled and better technologically endowed, all attributes for which they can charge a premium and achieve a very healthy bottom line. And that, they say, is fair compensation for the high-risk environment in which they operate.

The fact that they are making excellent profits to boot, is attracting the interest of those international players who have not yet read the books of the multinationals.

There appear to be a couple of ways to go as we peer into the mists of the 21st century, and nowhere do they swirl more densely and violently than here in Africa.

The globalisation of all things, including banking, offers a ready solution, by which local banks make it easier for newcomers by being absorbed or partnered in new banking ventures, thereby becoming internationalised themselves and part of the global banking village. It's not possible for African countries to legislate or regulate their banks out of trouble. That's been tried and it doesn't work. The more daring will take a black empowerment route, as South Africa is doing, but will have to tread warily under the gaze of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund lest they stray from the economic course Bretton Woods has laid before them.

"Financial services have been evolving at a great pace over the past decade and will continue to do so in the new millennium," says financial services giant KPMG in its 1999 survey into African banking.

"The banking industry has been traditionally regarded as being very strong, with relatively high barriers to entry," says the survey. "In recent years, however, developments in technology have opened up new delivery channels that caused these traditional barriers to come down."

Branching out

This in turn offers another way forward. The banking sector has traditionally been characterised by a single channel of distribution the branch network. This will soon be on its way out (in many countries it already is) with innovations such as banking by Internet, through convenient supermarket outlets or telebanking. Why this is important in the African retail context is because it provides a quick solution to bringing overheads down, especially in staffing and maintaining extensive and expensive branches throughout the banks networks, both domestically and internationally.

"All banks are reviewing the channels through which they provide financial services," says KPMG. "This is done mainly in pursuit of an improved return on equity, reducing the cost base of banks, maintaining margins and developing a customer-friendly organisation."

What now seems clear is that banking will take place through various distribution channels as we move into the millennium. In the first place, while branch networks will remain a major distribution channel for the next five years or so, becoming more focused on relationship development and sales, transaction processing will decrease. This service will be taken over by ATMs and other automated transactions, and will grow steadily, become ever more remotely situated and offer an increasing range of services.

The Internet will probably become the most important home banking channel for the banking industry, although it will be market specific. A mass Internet banking community is a distant possibility, if it ever happens at all. A service more likely to appeal to consumers - mainly through its convenience and existing infrastructure - is telephone banking with an ever-increasing range of services available, either through wired or wireless telephones. It is probably the telephone that offers the handiest solutions for Africa's retail bankers.

Changing banking perceptions

Current research shows, however, that in spite of the range and scope of technical innovations that are now, or will be, available, a significant number of banking clients are still more comfortable visiting their branches. It will take time to change banking perceptions and cultures. It is to Africa's advantage that the cost of technological change will be downward and much more rapid than would have been thought possible only a short while ago.

Says KPMG: "Technology is making formerly unimagined marketing and distribution channels readily accessible to customers. Banks are investing (billions) in pioneering new methods of electronic banking."

For as far ahead as we can see with any accuracy, much of banking's traditional and electronic activities will remain within urban and reasonably well-serviced rural communities. There is and will continue to be a vast unbanked population which has been shunned by commercial banks because of low income and high risk. An informal banking/lending system has existed in these communities since time immemorial, operated variously by 'sharks' or respectable lending clubs, kinds of bush building societies. Regulated community-based lending is on the way in and points encouragingly to economic deliverance.

Banking services Jar the unbanked

South Africa has taken the lead by attempting to regulate its so-called 'microlending' industry by introducing an institutional and regulatory framework aimed at providing the unbanked with financial services. It's important not only for the consumer who will have access to regulated borrowing, but it will also enable banks to provide loans for development or consumption purposes and at the same time promote economic empowerment and development. Apart from the thousands of microlenders in this market, the development is also being supported by banks focusing on providing loans to micro-enterprises.

There's no doubt that it's working and could provide a model for other parts of Africa where vast, populations are unbanked. It could also provide a toehold into fledgling corporate sectors that African banks could develop and call their own.

Ethiopia waits for its millennium

Millennium fever may be sweeping the globe, but for the devout of Ethiopia, the celebrations are a little premature: some eight years and nine months early. The calendar of the Erhiopian Orthodox Church uses a different measurement of time, the Julian rather than the Gregorian calendar, and their millennium is reached in mid-September 2008.

The history of Christianity in Ethiopia is as complex and fascinating as the country itself. This is the third largest population in Africa (after Nigeria and Egypt) with a remarkable mix of ethnic groups, around 80 speaking three hundred different languages and dialects. According to local legend, the Christian message reached Ethiopia around Fifty years after the death of Christ. It was not until the reign of one of Ethiopia's most powerful and influential kings, Ezana, who was converted by two Syrian missionaries, that Christianity was made the official religion of his kingdom in the 4th century AD.

King Ezana built Ethiopia's first known church in the city of Axum. It was at the sire of this church, now destroyed, from which the legend of Solomon, Sheba and the Ark of the Holy Covenent sprang. On the site of King Ezana's church now stands the Maryam Tsion church where Ethiopian tradition claims the most Holy of Holy relics, the Ark itself, is kept.

Early in the 6th century AD, the Ethiopian Christian Church expanded rapidly as evangelist priests of Syrian and Palestinian origin spread the faith. Fifteen hundred years later, Christianity is still the dominant religion of the region with an estimated 40m followers.

Two out of three Ethiopians are thought to profess the faith. Little is known, outside of the faith, of the tenets and ritual of this remarkable church which is the oldest in Africa and predates many European-based denominations.

But it is unlikely that Ethiopians will pass up the opportunity to celebrate along with the rest of the globe. They are more than happy to have two bites of the cherry and a huge firework display is being thrown in Addis Ababa. Ethiopia's best known entertainer, Aster Awake is coming home from the US for the event and she will be joined by Papa Wemba and Toure Kunde in a huge televised concert on millennium eve, so celebrations will be as joyous as any on the continent.