MOST OF those who agree that Africa is rising point to its impressive growth rates over the past decade or so as evidence. Their argument is strongest when placed side by side with the performance of the economies of the West that have been stagnating over the same period of time. And with that they can conclude that the continent of the future is Africa.

Not all are sold, however. Others contend that Africa’s economic growth figures mean little when its people are the poorest. They count as incontrovertible the evidence of rising income inequality, poverty, and unemployment, among others. The fuss, they argue, is all about ‘growth without development.’ For them, therefore, the slogan of ‘Africa rising’ is nothing but -- a slogan. 

Strong arguments on both sides imply that some truth can be extracted from either. One of these is that while many of Africa’s people are rising along with the impressive growth figures, some are falling behind. 

It is a question that has dogged societies for as long as they have existed. For instance, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Social Darwinism was a powerful idea for such a problem. Its proponents argued that like plants and animals, human beings were subject to the laws of natural selection where only the fit survive and the rest are left to die off. 

Society’s most vulnerable members did not require protection. And any policy intervention would be an interruption to the natural order of things. 

In the 21st century, it would be hard to imagine someone make such a crude argument. It is fair to say, therefore, that as a people we have come a long way in terms of how we think about human beings. 

Similar sentiments, however, continue to find their way in policy debates. Consider arguments on social protection, for instance. Its opponents the world over argue that its beneficiaries are groups of people who are naturally lazy and that government intervention only makes an already bad situation worse by encouraging people to sit around waiting for a ‘handout.’ As such, they are seen as a burden carried by the productive members of society. 

On the contrary are supporters of such programmes who point out that all human beings are potentially productive members of society. All that people who find themselves in unfortunate circumstances need, they argue, is an opportunity or a ‘hand up.’ 

However, something more pragmatic came into play. People who owned things came to learn that their personal safety and that of their property were inextricably linked to the welfare of the poor.  

Thus, by protecting the poor, they were also protecting themselves and their things. And with that development, the welfare state was born in places like the United States after The Great Depression.

Writing on the subject of economic exclusion, the head of the African Development Bank Dr. Donald Kaberuka recently pointed to places in Africa where the rich are placing orders for private jets when 60% of the population live on less than $1.25 a day. He warned that "The poor cannot sleep, because they are hungry, and the rich cannot sleep, because the poor are awake and hungry.” 

A similar sentiment was echoed by veteran journalist Charles Onyango Oboo that, "If young people have nothing to eat, they will eventually eat us.” 

Obbo cited the post election violence in Kenya in 2008 as an example of what could happen elsewhere "If for nothing else, because youth unemployment and poverty will result in hell for all those who have something.” 

For us in Rwanda, the government will soon release new poverty classifications popularly known as Ubudehe. These are important because they determine who gets free or discounted access to social services such as Mutuelle de Santé, and temporary employment through the VUP programme, for instance. 

Thus, most will remember the uproar when those classifications determined who gets free or subsidised university education. What the storm revealed was the need for dialogue over what Rwandans consider basic human needs that every citizen ought to access regardless of whether they ‘worked hard for them’ or not.  

Moreover, from such a conversation would be a consensus on whether Rwandans consider university education, for instance, to be life’s very basic necessity similar to food, housing, and healthcare. 

Instead, we spent time arguing about the names previously assigned to the categories. Surely, the names must be less humiliating than the substance of a life in the conditions for which the nomenclature endeavours to describe. 

A serious debate, therefore, would be underlain by the idea that taking care of the most vulnerable is something that every responsible society must do. And that the quality of our society can best be judged by the manner in which we treat the most vulnerable among us.