Some numbers actually do make people and countries change their whole way of thinking about their relations with other people as well as themselves. Take the GDP of China as compared to that of the world’s number one economy, the USA. Economists have spent the last few years speculating on when the day will come when China, with its fabulous rates of GDP growth, would finally resume its rightful place as the world’s biggest economy which it was for many centuries until European, Japanese and American colonialism systematically plundered the country in the 19th century. When that day comes, and it will certainly come at some time between 2020 and 2030, the US will become something that is not part of its national psyche, it will become number two!
In Africa we have had the same situation with South Africa and Nigeria. For years, South African officials and politicians as well as the public, whether under apartheid or under democracy, could take for granted that their country was number one in Africa and that anyone north of the Limpopo was small stuff and could be taken for granted. It has resulted in an insufferable level of hubris and arrogance in Pretoria towards its neighbours that was painful to not only those in Botswana but throughout southern Africa. But suddenly in early April, Nigeria recalculated its GDP and overnight its GDP went from 42 billion naira to 80.2 billion Naira. The Nigerian economy had grown 90% overnight and South Africa was in a new position- number two in Africa!
