Asia and Africa, Two Emerging Continents at Different Stages: The Dessous des cartes Match-Up

The programme opens with a flyover of Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. It presents the city as the symbol of an Africa "that is doing well," far from the traumatic memory of the genocide. The presenter immediately adds a caveat: the country's leader, Paul Kagame, is both a reformer and an autocrat who tolerates no opposition, and he is contributing to the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Even so, according to the programme, Rwanda illustrates a continent with many strengths that will allow it to carry weight in the years ahead. These strengths are economic growth and population growth, at a time when Asia is beginning to run out of steam.

At the end of the Second World War, Africa and Asia were in similar situations. Both were largely colonised by European powers, poor and very underdeveloped. The programme notes that their GDP per capita is even estimated to have been equivalent at the time. It is this shared starting point that makes the divergence of the following decades so striking.

From the 1970s, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea experienced a spectacular economic take-off, following in Japan's footsteps. These "Asian dragons" benefited from American aid in the context of the Cold War. In the programme's view, however, their success also rested on a strategic state steering export-oriented industrialisation. This model combined controlled opening to the world market with the upskilling of industrial sectors. Companies that had been exporting textiles thus began, a few years later, to export electronic equipment.

South Korea serves as a detailed example. There, the model took the form of protectionism, particularly in agriculture, with a ban on rice imports. The state nationalised the banks and granted large loans to big family-run conglomerates, the chaebols: Hyundai, LG, Kia, Samsung and Daewoo, among others. Within a few decades, the country became an industrial power exporting cars, ships, textiles, chemicals and electronics all over the world.

From the 1980s, the dragons pulled five new emerging economies in Southeast Asia along in their wake, the "new tigers": Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam. At the same time, China launched a major reform of its economy, opened up to globalisation and experienced lightning-fast development.

The programme stresses that these radical policies were often put in place by strong, even authoritarian, heads of state. It cites Park Chung-hee in South Korea, Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan, Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore, Deng Xiaoping in China, Suharto in Indonesia and Mahathir Mohamad in Malaysia.

The figures presented show the widening gap. Between 1980 and 2000, GDP per capita doubled in Malaysia, rose fivefold in China and sevenfold in South Korea. Over the same period, that of sub-Saharan Africa did not grow and even declined slightly.

The programme puts forward three sets of explanations.

The first has to do with decolonisation. In Africa, it left behind more artificial borders and state structures that were often less stable. The continent was then hit by a great many conflicts: civil wars in Sudan, Ethiopia, Angola, Rwanda, Algeria and the Congo, the last of which are described as particularly deadly.

The second major obstacle was oversized industrial projects. The example chosen is the Ajaokuta steel complex in Nigeria. It cost 8 billion dollars in investment and, to this day, has never produced any steel.

The third factor is a paradoxical one: an abundance of raw materials may have had negative effects. Nigeria again illustrates this. Thanks to its immense oil reserves in the Niger Delta, it became the continent's leading producer and exporter from the 1970s onward. But a rentier economy also took hold, fostering corruption and leaving the country vulnerable to fluctuations in commodity prices.

According to the programme, all these dysfunctions caused the public debt of African states to explode.

From the 2000s, a turning point came. Part of the continent entered a phase of development, which the programme attributes to three factors: a general rise in commodity prices, relative political stability and a favourable international economic environment.

According to the 2023 Africa Emergence Index, eleven countries met the criteria for emergence: Mauritius, Seychelles, Cape Verde, South Africa, Tunisia, Morocco, Botswana, Senegal, Ghana, Egypt and Namibia. Ten other countries are considered to be "on the path to emergence."

Senegal serves as a case study. The country has recorded average annual growth of more than 4% over the past twenty-five years. To sustain this growth, the Emerging Senegal Plan was launched in 2014 with the aim of developing strategic infrastructure. Three projects are presented:

• a rail line between Dakar and its international airport, running through Diamniadio, a new town meant to host, among other things, a digital technology park;
• a mineral and bulk port near Bargny;
• a network of buses with dedicated lanes in Dakar.

These high-quality bus services (Bus Rapid Transit, or BRT) sometimes cut journey times in half. The programme calls them "crucial drivers of development" and notes that they are multiplying across the continent, as in Casablanca.

According to the programme, this economic dynamism in part of Africa is fuelled in particular by demographics. The continent had fewer than 500 million inhabitants in 1980. That figure rose to 810 million in 2000, has reached 1.6 billion today and is expected to reach 2.5 billion in 2050.

Tanzania illustrates this phenomenon. The country had 30 million inhabitants in 1995 and has 72 million today. Dar es Salaam, its largest city, grew from 1.8 million to 8 million inhabitants in barely twenty-five years. The programme sees this as a potential asset, but also as an immense challenge in terms of jobs, housing, security, transport and sanitation.

This rapid urbanisation affects the entire continent. In 1975, Africa had only a handful of cities with more than a million inhabitants; today it has nearly 80.

In Asia, some ageing countries are experiencing the opposite phenomenon: population decline. The population has been shrinking in Japan since 2010, in South Korea and Taiwan since 2020, and in China since 2022. According to the programme, this decline is often accompanied by an economic slowdown.

New emerging Asian countries are nevertheless taking over, with strong GDP growth: India, Mongolia, Bhutan, but also Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and above all Vietnam.

Vietnam has sustained average annual economic growth of around 7% for more than forty years. The programme attributes this "miracle" to the communist regime's opening to the market economy in 1986, under the policy known as Đổi Mới. Farmers were now allowed to sell their surpluses, which greatly boosted agriculture, particularly in the Mekong and Red River deltas. Vietnam is today the world's second-largest coffee exporter and third-largest rice exporter.

The country has also become an essential manufacturing and industrial power, particularly in textiles and electronics assembly. This activity is concentrated in Ho Chi Minh City, the economic capital, whose growth has been meteoric: 5 million inhabitants in 2000, 14 million today.

The programme then takes stock of the two continents in 2026, by income category:

• High income (GDP per capita above 14,000 dollars): eight Asian countries, compared with just one African country, Seychelles.
• Upper-middle income: five Asian countries, thirteen African countries.
• Lower-middle income: category mentioned without detailed figures.
• Low income (GDP per capita below 1,200 dollars): this is where the gap is most striking. Afghanistan is the only Asian country in this situation, whereas many African states are affected.

For some of these poor countries, the programme points to conflicts linked to jihadist insurgencies. A map records all violent events involving Islamist organisations in 2025. It shows that poor countries are often the hardest hit.

This is notably the case in Mali, where the war against jihadism has been going on for fourteen years. It has caused many deaths and displaced hundreds of thousands of people. It also led to the overthrow of the government in a military coup in 2020. Jihadist groups have even gone back on the offensive, as shown by a map of JNIM attacks since April 2025. The programme speaks of fourteen lost years for the country's development: after more than tripling from 2000 onward, GDP per capita has stagnated since the start of the conflict.

The programme sums up this "match between emerging continents" as follows. Asia is showing signs of running out of steam. Africa has potential, but also wars and structural handicaps.

It ends with one last "African champion": Morocco. According to the African Development Bank, Morocco has become the continent's industrial champion, overtaking South Africa. The country is investing in particular in its ports, but also in aviation: Royal Air Maroc has become the continent's second-largest airline. For the presenter, Morocco "tells us something about a continent that may well take off tomorrow."

For further reading, the programme recommends the French Development Agency's report L'économie africaine 2026, published by La Découverte in the "Repères" series.