About two decades ago, The Economist [infamously] dubbed Africa as the “Hopeless Continent”, claiming that the new millennium had brought more disaster than hope to Africa with threats of famine in Ethiopia (again); floods in Mozambique ; mass murder in Uganda and the implosion of Sierra Leone . A decade later, the magazine did a 180-degree and changed its tune to “Africa Rising” thanks to major improvements in labor productivity; dropping inflation and booming economies. But alas, the upbeat narrative was not to last for long, with the 2014 oil price crash devastating some of the continent’s most promising economies. And now, it’s happening all over again, with some of the continent’s leading oil producers in dire straits after the 2020 oil price crash. To wit, Angola has gone from being Africa’s top crude producer just five years ago to barely pumping more than war-torn Libya while Nigeria–another key […]