Out East, they have the Asian Tigers yet we Africans boast no massive technology exporter. So why are there no African equivalents? A difficult question this.

At the outset, two observations. We are not Asian, and there are no tigers in Africa. The answer to the question is a toughie that has exercised the minds of economists for three-quarters of a century. My answer to the question is simple. Africans were not conquered by Japan.

At its peak in mid-1942, Japan’s “Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” extended southwards from Manchuria to the then Ceylon, and eastward to Papua New Guinea. Within the Sphere, Japan force-marched industrial development to Formosa, coastal China, Korea and Indo-China. The Battle of Midway marked high water when the tide turned against the Empire. But before that one might take note of the list of today’s Tigers in the making.

In late October 1942, Rommel’s Afrika Korps was halted at the second Battle of El Alamein. A month later, the Red Army pushed westward from above and below Stalingrad and closed the net around Von Paulus’ 6th Army. The grand scheme that the Third Reich would gain control of the Mediterranean and then capture Egypt and the Caucasus oil fields with the Imperial Japanese Navy sailing up the Red Sea did not come to pass.

Or did it? 

A counterfactual might read like this. Japan prevailed at Midway, with the US Navy suffering a crushing defeat that led to the sacking of Roosevelt and his replacement by Joseph Kennedy. Isolation followed. After Spain seized Gibraltar, the reduction of Malta followed. His supply lines secured, Rommel drove Montgomery into a disastrous evacuation from Alexandria and then pushed through the Levant. A month later he shared dinner in Baku with the victor of Stalingrad, Von Paulus.

Yet London and Moscow stood firm even as Admiral Yamamoto headed south through the Indian Ocean. Vichy Madagascar surrendered. The British abandoned Mombasa and Dar es Salaam and fled for the safety of Durban, Union of South Africa — the war factory of Great Britain.

The one gain for Britain was the seizure of Lisbon which opened the way for the Union of South Africa to grab both Portuguese West Africa and Portuguese East Africa. 

The US abandoned the costly Manhattan Project while the German nuclear scientists dithered, even as Churchill, Stalin and Smuts pooled resources to build an atomic bomb. Japan made it clear that she had no ambition to traverse the Mozambique Channel as her expeditionary force rushed to Shinkolobwe to seize the yellowcake needed for an atomic device.

The joint British and Soviet prototype was tested at Vastrap in the Kalahari Desert, and a month later a larger plutonium bomb code-named Matryoshka destroyed Berchtesgaden and the Nazi leadership.

Japan, lagging behind, was forced to dismantle its prototype bomb. The threat of mutually assured destruction among the victors then maintained an uneasy equilibrium to the mid-1960s, at which stage the former belligerents and neo-emperors were both harried and exhausted and went home to their earlier borders.

Japan, unlike the other colonisers, left behind newly-industrialising East African and East Asian states who had gained military, administrative and industrial know-how and skills.

So to the sub-equatorial mega-states of 2030, nuclear-powered Capricornia (SADC bar the DRC, Tanzania and the island states) and Watu (Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda).

They have large populations, abundant natural resources, long coastlines, huge agricultural outputs, yet one is at lower-middle income level, while the other enjoys high-income status. Which is which, and what explains the difference?

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Both mega-states endured lengthy tribal wars as their elites fought over colonial legacies and ruins. Capricornia gained the semblance of national identity through a new lingua franca, Songenaf, while Watu modernised the kiSwahili of old.

Mandelania, population 15 million, became the capital of Capricornia; same sized Amani that of Watu. Their GDPs were similar, giving them membership of the trillion-dollar club, but Watu’s manufacturing share of GDP was 35%, with that of larger Capricornia at 10%.  

As to Gini inequality, Capricornia was the global outlier at 60%, with Watu at 40%, close to the world average; unemployment averaged 20% across the regions of Capricornia; for Watu the figure was 5%.

The Capricornian polity was most strongly influenced by English law and adversarial relations between capital and labour. That was also true of the countries seized by Imperial Japan. The component states of Capricornia practiced racial exclusion from the core economy, military and political systems, and the majority were denied technical skills.

Worse still, they regarded the Japanese as inferiors and rejected their overtures to enter into manufacturing joint ventures. Capricornia, though deracialising from the 1980s onward, was unable to change the dominant mindset of exclusion with its counterpart ressentiment, with the result that rent-seeking became institutionalised.

Moreover, the diversity of cultures made cohesion difficult with constant threats of secession.

In contrast, Japan, having imposed its violent will on East Africa, drew youth into all walks of life and trained them to rise up the ranks. A generation later, Watu came into being with a strong base of technically skilled personnel, becoming a factory for the production of medium- and high-technology goods, and earning the sobriquet “Africasia”. Japan, China, Vietnam, the Gulf States and Capricornia became Watu’s major trading partners with whom she was able to function as a price setter.

This equilibrium held until early 2024 when the next Sars-COV-2 variant, the most contagious yet, struck and decimated government, business, trade union and civil society leadership worldwide.

Capricornia’s vaccine supply and distribution buckled under the sudden demand of a previously rejectionist population. Three months of Wuhan-scale horror suddenly turned, making Capricornia the global outlier. The reason eluded investigation until a junior researcher stumbled on the reason.

An infected worker in the main vaccine factory had contaminated a batch and this small change in its composition had replicated. Within six months a unique vaccine, named Black Swan was in phase 3 clinical trials and then curtailed the pandemic.

Capricornia’s traumatised survivors then made common cause in a government of national unity with technocrat ministers subject to popular recall, and the old mantra, power to the people took on a new meaning.

The 2025 zero-waste campaign morphed into the demand for quality service with slogans like “waste no child”, “waste no time”, “waste no food”.

A decade later a sea-change became evident. Expectation and accountability was robust. Infrastructure was renewed, new industries emerged, unemployment halved, and a high-speed train line was traversing north across the Mozambique plains.  

Capricornia’s standing in world affairs rebounded as the arc of history bent toward moral justice. A lion cub stretched her back and roared at the ocean. DM