Economic boom in Africa
When I lecture on global Christianity, I am sometimes asked whether, in retrospect, I would revise what I wrote many years ago in books like The Next Christendom. Usually my answer is no.
But in one critical area conditions are changing so quickly as to demand rethinking. Whereas I (and others) once presented Africa as a region of extreme poverty and deprivation, we now have to take account of economic development that in some regions is so rapid as to amount to a boom. We can only begin to outline the religious consequences.
At the turn of this century, sub-Saharan Africa was an economic nightmare. During the 1990s, the region managed annual GDP growth of only 2.2 percent—dreadful for such a poor region—while inflation ran at 27 percent. The AIDS epidemic was out of control, and much of central Africa was embroiled in the mass slaughter of the Congo wars. Civil conflicts threatened to ignite elsewhere, above all in Nigeria. News stories from Africa customarily focused on ruthless militias, child soldiers, blood diamonds, and mass rape.
