Building on Chapter 5 and embedded in a discussion of two competing paradigms – Africa as “hopeless” and “hopeful” continent – this chapter deals with the economic and socioeconomic situation after 2000. It discusses various geopolitical and economic changes that took place since then, including the rise of China and efforts to give the continent a “big push”, which culminated in the “Year for Africa” 2005. It shows that there have been more trading partners, more consumption, more foreign direct investment, more private economic activities, more efforts against corruption, and leapfrogging. The chapter also discusses the shape and importance of the informal sector and turns to the socioeconomic development, providing facts and figures. The Millennium Development Goals and their successors, the Sustainable Development Goals as well as to what extent African states have achieved them are analysed as is the effectiveness of development aid.

This chapter shows that the re-imaging of Africa in growth terms is not only a reflection of Africa’s growth record but also creating "confidence in the market" by confirming that Africa is ripe and ready to host investment and to open up markets in areas where they did not exist or existed but were not capitalist in form. Either way, however, the "Africa on the rise" narrative – indeed all growth praises showered on Africa – achieve a major political and economic goal. Neglecting ethical questions about sustainable jobs, inequality, and ecological crisis, while extolling the virtues of capital accumulation, it extends a particular neoliberal ideology which favors people with market power, not the majority with precarious positions or their relationship with nature. Economic growth, then, must also be regarded as a problematic explanation. Like its tools of commodifying land (Chapters 2 and 3), labourlabor (Chapter 4), and the environment (Chapter 5), mainstream approaches to economic growth must be fundamentally rejected.