Episode #22
EC-CF_ShortTakes Serie_Africa is not Fantasy Land
I’ve been sitting with this for a while. From Wakanda to Dahomey to Orïsha, global entertainment is creating powerful images of Africa and I love that they exist.Marvel’s Black Panther (2018) gave us Wakanda: a fictional African kingdom of extraordinary technological power, wealth, and sovereignty. The Woman King (2022) brought the Agojie warriors of the historical Kingdom of Dahomey (present-day Benin) to the world. Paramount’s upcoming adaptation of Children of Blood and Bone will introduce millions to Orïsha, a West African-inspired world shaped by mythology and magic. These stories matter because they expand imagination. They make people feel something about African possibility. But I’ve found myself asking a harder question: What is the real distance between the Africa imagined on screen and the Africa we are living in 2026? When I look at the Democratic Republic of Congo, I see a country that still supplies the large majority of the world’s cobalt, essential for the batteries in our phones and electric vehicles. According to the Cobalt Institute’s 2025 Market Report and analyses from Fastmarkets and mining-industry trackers, the DRC accounted for roughly 73–78% of global mined cobalt production in 2024–2025 (figures commonly cited around 70%+ in recent years). Yet it remains one of the poorest countries by almost every development metric (World Bank income and human-development rankings). I see Nigeria building genuine global cultural power through Nollywood and Afrobeats, while millions of its citizens still live with chronic electricity shortages and high youth unemployment, realities regularly documented in World Bank, African Development Bank, and national energy reports. I see South Africa, still the continent’s most industrialized economy, wrestling with Eskom’s load-shedding that has repeatedly disrupted households and businesses for years, as reported extensively by South African media, Eskom’s own updates, and economic analyses. I see Cameroon facing persistent economic constraints: electricity shortages that weigh on industry and daily productivity, fiscal and debt pressures, infrastructure gaps that limit investment and growth, and overall economic fragility that keeps per-capita gains modest despite natural resources (as reflected in recent IMF Article IV assessments, World Bank data, and economic outlooks for 2025–2026). I see Sudan: Since April 2023 the war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces has produced one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises. The International Rescue Committee (July 2026 update) states that more than 150,000 people have been killed; other estimates range from roughly 150,000 to as high as 400,000 when including indirect deaths. ACLED records lower confirmed direct fatalities, while UN agencies and humanitarian monitors confirm massive displacement (millions internally displaced and refugees). The economic toll, destroyed infrastructure, disrupted trade, collapsed services, compounds the human cost. I see Ghana and Zambia forced into major IMF-supported debt restructurings after years of elevated borrowing. Across the continent, according to ONE Data (drawing on World Bank International Debt Statistics, figures as of 2024 and last updated in early 2026), African countries owed approximately US$707.9 billion in external debt. Twenty-one low-income African countries were classified as in or at high risk of debt distress. Debt-service payments reached tens of billions annually. I notice the privatizations happening right now. In Kenya, Reuters reported in December 2025 that the government agreed to sell a 15% stake in Safaricom to Vodacom in a deal worth about US$1.6 billion (with the government’s holding reduced from ~35% to 20%). The transaction and related SOE divestment plans were part of efforts to raise fiscal space amid debt pressure; parliamentary and regulatory processes continued into 2026. I also see too many big infrastructure and energy projects that never reach financial close. Recent analyses of African energy investment (including 2025-2026 reviews) repeatedly cite foreign-exchange risk, weak offtaker credit profiles, political interference, and structuring problems as key barriers, even while hundreds of millions still lack reliable electricity. Foreign military presence remains visible. The United States maintains its largest permanent African footprint at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti (thousands of personnel). France has reduced forces in the Sahel after successive coups but retains residual positions. China operates its first overseas base in Djibouti; Russia (including Africa Corps), Turkey, the UAE and others maintain facilities or access arrangements. Multiple foreign powers operate across the continent for counter-terrorism, resource security, and geopolitical reasons (documented in various 2024–2026 security and academic assessments). And when I look at the United Nations Security Council, the five permanent seats are still held by China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States, the post-1945 arrangement. Africa, with more than 1.4 billion people, still has no permanent seat (only rotating non-permanent membership). On education: according to UNESCO’s 2026 Global Education Monitoring Report, the number of out-of-school children and young people globally has risen to 273 million. Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for a very large share of that total. Primary enrolment rates appear stronger on paper in many countries, yet completion rates and actual learning outcomes remain far from universal because of rapid population growth, conflict, poverty, teacher shortages and weak infrastructure. On migration: the IOM’s World Migration Report 2026 records that by mid-2024 around 45.8 million international migrants were from Africa, roughly 3% of the region’s population. About 21 million lived outside the continent (approximately 11 million in Europe). Most African migration remains intra-African. The main drivers are economic opportunity, youth unemployment, and conflict. Some colonial-era structures have not fully closed. The CFA franc is still the currency of multiple West and Central African countries (with historical links to France that have undergone partial reforms but remain subjects of ongoing debate). Arbitrary colonial borders continue to influence conflicts, and certain resource and monetary arrangements still carry earlier power imbalances. For simple comparison: World Bank data for 2025 puts Sub-Saharan Africa’s GDP per capita (current US$) at approximately 1,673. High-income economies average around US$54,000; the European Union is in the region of US$47,000. These are averages that hide variation within both Africa and the West, yet the scale of the gap is factual and large.I am not writing this to create panic. I am writing this because I am 100% against storytelling that makes it harder for Africa to stay truthful to its own situation. When powerful fiction starts functioning as a comforting fantasy land, a kind of Wakanda escape that softens the urgency of confronting economic realities, debt burdens, infrastructure deficits, education gaps, and productivity challenges, it becomes an obstacle rather than an inspiration.Symbolic representation and powerful fiction can have value. But they must never replace, dilute, or delay the difficult, unglamorous work of facing reality head-on: strengthening economic fundamentals, raising education quality and access, building reliable infrastructure and energy systems, managing debt sustainably, and driving real economic transformation. This is simply me looking at both the screen and the ground, and refusing to let the screen become a substitute for the ground.Beyond Wakanda. I wish you a nice Friday!
