Africa is on the rise, and so is the heat around the continent. Researchers, business people, and journalists from around the world cherish the transformation that Africa has seemingly made during the last decade. The change in narrative regarding the continent has been dramatic, from the ‘hopeless continent,’ and a ‘scar on the conscience of the Western world,’ to the ‘hopeful,’ ‘rising,’ and ‘dynamic’ continent. Africa is no longer represented by the usual face of a suffering child, but rather by the smiling face of the new middle-class. The continent’s metamorphosis is undeniable and is likely to be enduring. According to IMF, in the upcoming five years, ten out of twenty of the fastest growing economies will be from Sub-Saharan Africa. Commodities sectors are booming, rapidly growing consumer markets are attracting new foreign investors, and returns on equity are among the world’s highest. Nevertheless, the African business landscape is still not a bed of roses. Political uncertainty, corruption, widespread red tape, weak governance, poor infrastructure, and low labour productivity all make investors wary of the current Africa frenzy. With many positive changes happening, across-the-board enthusiasm is rather misplaced. Africa is home to 56 states, an extremely heterogeneous population, GDP per capita ranging from 300 USD (Burundi) to 36,600 USD (Equatorial Guinea) and political systems ranging from authoritarian regimes (Sudan, Zimbabwe) to democracy (Ghana, Botswana). Therefore, whoever treats the African continent as a monolith, with growth embracing each and every part of it, is naïve or ignorant, or holds this view for a specific reason. The objectives of this study are threefold. First, it seeks to present and critically discuss major economic, political, and social development trends in Sub-Saharan Africa. Secondly, it is to examine an on-going shift in Africa’s international relations with the outside world where Europe’s clout is waning and South-South co-operation is on the rise. And, lastly, it seeks to better understand the business and political practices of developing countries in Africa, and thus provide food for thought to CEE, whose business presence on the continent has been alarmingly limited.

Africa is on the move, and so is the flow of oil unearthed on the continent. In recent years, the region has become a hot spot on the global map of oil discoveries, with dozens of investors rushing to tap into the crude wealth which is now estimated at 130 billion barrels. This is still not very much compared to the Middle East, but the recent frenzy clearly shows that Africa has certain virtues that investors worldwide cannot resist. The region is called an oil frontier for a reason, and, like a classic frontier, it remains relatively unexplored and unexploited, with opportunities abounding. The oil industry believes that at least another 100 billion barrels are only waiting to be discovered; to some experts this is only a conservative estimate. In recent years, license-awarding rounds have been announced more frequently, with more acreage to take than anywhere in the world. Oil has been flowing in Africa for decades, but recent events have shifted the petroleum sector’s development trajectory in many ways. Firstly, whereas West African oil used to be the region’s hallmark, now the tables have turned, and with recent oil discoveries in Uganda and Kenya, an oil bonanza is increasingly felt in the East. Having said that, as this report demonstrates, nearly half of Sub-Saharan Africa is now either producing oil or about to start production soon. Secondly, in historical terms it was oil supermajors, such as Shell or ExxonMobil, which set the rules of the game and regarded the region as their own exclusive playground. Today the majors are stepping back – both from upstream and downstream – and numerous “independents” such as Tullow Oil and Anadarko have joined the race, with plenty of projects to go around. Also, indigenous host National Oil Companies (NOC) are lining up to secure a larger share of the pie, and some, such as Sonangol, have become true heavy-weights. The industry itself has become increasingly more diverse in terms of nationality. Chinese, Indian, Malaysian, Brazilian and Russian companies are making inroads into the region in ways which make some Western companies’ efforts look rather pale. Things have changed dramatically on a technological front, as well. Whereas onshore and shallow water production were dominant modes of extraction in the past, now the industry has been constantly pushing frontiers further, with offshore deep and ultra-deep water, tarsands and heavy oil.

A review of the evidence for occupation at 'Aqar Quf (Dur-Kurigalzu) between the neo-Babylonian period and the excavation of the site in 1942. The study notes the appearance of the toponym 'Aqar Quf in early Arab texts and then from the 16th century until the end of the 18th century in travel accounts of western travellers passing through Iraq. During this period many visitors identified the ruins of the ziggurat as the remains of the tower of Babylon. 19th century references to 'Aqar Quf became increasingly scientific until the site was correctly identifies as ancient Dur Kurigalzu in the 1850s.

The aim of this article is to clarify the position of language in sociological theory, analyzing the discourses of a sociological phenomenologist of the so-called “meaning school,” notably Thomas Luckmann. Since the mid-1960s, a field called “sociology of language” has emerged as an attempt to focus on linguistic heterogeneity in society and deal with social problems such as discrimination and disparity in terms of language. In contrast, sociological theories represented by Luckmann’s sociology of knowledge conceived language to be the “social a priori” that is intersubjectively shared among people. This idea replaced the problem of understanding subjective meaning in Max Weber’s interpretative sociology with linguistic meaning. Language was regarded not as a problem but as a solution to the problem. In this sense, the view on language in sociological theory should not be called “sociology of language” but rather “linguistic sociology.” While Talcott Parsons believed that a normative value of religion is shared in society, Luckmann pointed out that religion became privatized with the rapid industrialization after the war. Thus, for Luckmann, language assumed the role of religion: people are born into their own linguistic community, not religious community. In this way, the “shared” among people that sociological theory presumes shifted from religion to language. However, the sharing of language was actually a product of national society, correlated to the change in the employee structure and the rise in educational standards. Hence, we are unable to naively admire common language as the life-worldly foundation. Especially in today’s global society, language is causing problems such as linguistic conflicts to reemerge. The sharing of language therefore cannot be presupposed. What we genuinely share is rather the situation that we share nothing.

The African economic path has been largely associated with the continent’s vast natural resources. Mining and oil companies have long been flocking to the region, setting up mines, drilling wells and shipping out its wealth to the international commodity markets. This is changing now. Whereas Zambian copper, Angolan oil and Ghanaian gold have not lost their shine and keep attracting foreign investors, the international business community has begun looking at the region from a slightly different perspective. Domestic consumption and internal markets, which in the past rarely stirred investors’ imaginations, are now becoming business hotspots, and Sub-Saharan Africa has been declared the final frontier for retailers. In the last decade, Sub-Saharan Africa has seen 4% growth in consumer spending, and according to available forecasts, this trend is not a temporary anomaly. Never before have Africans been called “consumers” on the pages of so many influential reports and official documents. The continent has seen global brands and retailers, along with small businesses and start-ups, including a growing number of firms from Central Europe, knocking on its doors on an unprecedented scale. They are all trying to tap into a potential which, for a change, is not trapped under the ground but very much above – in African consumers’ pockets. Make no mistake, the major reason for this is profit. It has been estimated that African consumer markets will inflate to nearly $1 trillion by 2020. With the African buoyant demographics and an emerging – slowly but surely – middle class, the region is poised to become many investors’ darling in the years to come Truth be told, the “Africa rising” gospel preached by so many recently went through particularly rough waters in 2014. In fact, some commentators have already put the Africa rising narrative to sleep, calling it undeserved hype and a sheer statistical stunt. Escalation of Boko Haram’s murderous activity in Nigeria, Somalian Al-Shabaab’s recurrent attacks, the dramatic war that West Africa has been waging against Ebola, continuing instability in Central Africa – it has all captured the imagination of prospective investors and regrettably provided a blow to the notion that Africa is ripe for business and welcomes foreign investors with open arms. However, those who follow Africa more closely, including the authors of this report, are aware that such events hardly paint the continent’s business landscape in true colours. Even so, a series of sombre news events has not helped. As a result, in Central Europe many investors’ appetites for African markets have surely waned. This report attempts to look at African consumer markets through the lenses of a potential investor from the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) region. But instead of providing an overall picture, which, we believe, is redundant and not very useful when it comes to real investment decisions, it breaks down domestic consumer markets, whose size is roughly captured by the size of consumer spending, into individual sectors. This is done according to available data, courtesy of the African Development Bank, which helps understand where (into which sectors) an African consumer’s spending is channelled. This methodology is not without problems. As it is based on nominal spending and its sectoral allocation, it ends up lumping all consumers together. This implies that the strategic problem of African consume segments may not be sufficiently addressed. The report seeks to partly redress this imbalance by devoting a chapter on the middle class in Africa, whose emergence and size should inform investors’ calculations more than other income groups. The report is structured as follows. The first part of the report discusses underlying features of the African consumer market and its future potential, such as demographics and the middle class, in order to analyse and provide a quantitative justification to the selected sectors. In the second and essential part, all the sectors that the authors identify as significant based on the available data are described. This includes, in order of appearance, the following sectors: (1) food and non-alcoholic beverages, (2) housing, electricity, gas and other fuels, (3) transport, (4) clothing and footwear, and (5) other potential sectors. Additionally, the report includes business case studies of Polish companies that have successfully entered African markets and/or appreciate their growing potential. The case studies also discuss a range of issues which Polish entrants regard as challenges and business barriers. It should be stressed that the findings of any report are only as good as the data. Here, the report employs a complete dataset prepared by the African Development Bank. Having in mind the problem of data quality in Africa, one should approach these numbers with caution. Nevertheless, since the report uses the data only to establish spending patterns and sectoral allocation, it should not jeopardise the conclusions in any significant way even if the size of respective sectors are not entirely accurate. Another reason for caution, which this and other CEED Institute reports highlight repeatedly, is the simple truth that Africa is not a country, and the business opportunities should be explored individually (on a country level) instead of “regional lumping”. Additionally, as pointed out by Nielsen, a leading global information and measurement company, following market macro-trends and promising statistics (e.g. growing GDP and consumer base) is not enough. To be successful, companies should also put together three key pieces: who shops, where they shop and what they shop. Moreover, looking at total consumption figures, African consumer markets are in fact dominated by a handful of countries, among which South Africa and Nigeria – two of the continent’s heavy weights – account for 51% of SSA’s total expenditure. Last but not least, the authors of this report do not wish to become simply more names on the long list of uncritical business cheerleaders, ignoring the myriad of challenges the region and individual countries in Africa are still facing. Whereas the harsh realities of many African countries and its inhabitants are fully acknowledged, the focus in this report is to track and follow African consumer spending and establish how the spending patterns may translate into business opportunities for CEE companies. As argued in various parts of this report, companies from Central and Eastern Europe that are looking to establish (or strengthen) their international footprint should turn their eyes towards the African continent. On the one hand, Africa is considered to be the world’s last “mass consumption frontier” (it is predicted that by 2050 one out of four people will live in Africa), with consumers’ money fuelling various sectors across the continent (from food and beverages, through housing, transportation, clothing and footwear to domestic appliances, ICT and financial services – all discussed in this report). On the other hand, companies from the CEE region have experience in operating within a dynamically changing business environment – which is the state that Africa is currently in. This “wind of change”, along with the unique experience of CEE companies and evolving African consumers’ spending habits, have created an unprecedented window of opportunity for both Africa and Central and Eastern Europe.