I think the squeez from Africa had much less to do with rising middle class in Africa as much as it has to do with the crisis in (but not restricted to)North Africa. If China has 20 years head start over India. India has the same over much of Africa. Right now as we speak Ethiopia, Somali, Kenya, Djibouti and Uganda are facing massive food crisis. Too early for the African “middle class†if there is such a thing to worry about energy crisis of the future at this point. As poor as India maybe with the looming population increase, you still don’t have Oxfam and UN aid agencies working in India. Not to mention Africa’s struggling energy sector has grown only 3% annually in last three decades which has inhibited Africa’s GDP growth.
ravager,
These resources are located in Africa,that’s the difference. The window of opportunity for India to form strategic partnerships to exploit these resources is rapidly closing. The major players are still the West and increasingly China.
The next twenty years will produce African Governments that are more attentive to the needs of their people - not out of choice but of necessity. Africa has a ‘middle class’ of 313 million and this figure could easily double in the next few decades.
I live in Africa’s most populous nation and I observe these changes first hand on a daily basis. We built infrastructure for gas export not factoring the growth of the internal market. After the infrastructure was done we found out that our priorities were wrong and we should have focused more on the internal market.
Oxfam works in India (http://www.oxfamindia.org/)and so does UNICEF (http://www.unicef.org/india/).
About the growth in the energy sector,the barriers are less structural than political. The Niger Delta crisis is a significant contributor to the low growth figures. But with new production in Ghana, the expected liberalisation of the Libyan Oil sector after Gaddafi, political resolution of the Niger Delta crisis and production in Angola I expect high growth this decade. (Sudan is a big question mark).