If Africa wants to smell like roses again, it must achieve five things

Last year didn’t end well for Africa, and 2014 opened on a bad note.

The barbaric conflict in the Central African Republic erupted again, and a murderous conflict broke out in newly-independent South Sudan after a failed coup attempt.

Events in both Libya and Egypt made the otherwise abominable former dictators Muammar Gaddafi and Hosni Mubarak look like angels.

Mozambique, which was posting among the highest economic growth rates in the world just a few years ago and was being touted as a model of stability, is sliding back into its old violent ways. Nigeria remains a bag of contradictions.

Just five months ago, everyone was singing about “Africa Rising”. Things looked generally promising for the continent. Today a gloomy mood is beginning to set in, and there is talk of “Africa Dimming” and “African Sunset”.

All is not lost, by any means. The African countries that were always democratic and prosperous like Mauritius and Botswana continue to flourish. However, it is also possible to dramatically change the narrative about Africa this year, if the following five things happen.

FIVE THINGS

•The World Cup kicks off in Brazil on June 12. No African team has ever won the Cup.

If an African team brought home the trophy this year, the world would forget that stink up in South Sudan or down in CAR until the New Year of 2015, and produce copious stories in praise of African sport.

•Africa gets a bad rap, rightly so, for its strongmen who have been in power forever, and organise elections only as a means to rig themselves back to power with a veneer of legitimacy.

Last year The Economist noted that half of the world’s 30 longest-serving rulers were African. Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe has been in power for 35 years.

Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea has been “eating” for 35 years. Angola’s José Eduardo dos Santos has also run the mineral-rich nation with a lethal iron fist for 35 years.

Cameroon’s Paul Biya has been in power for nearly 32 years. Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni is a junior in this club, but he has nevertheless ruled for an impressive 28 years.

If just two of these marathon rulers threw in the towel (it would be better and more dramatic if all them did so at the same time, of course), the world would be confounded and the storyline about Africa would smell like roses all over the place.

NOBEL PRIZES

•Africans have probably won enough Nobel Prizes for Peace, and a sprinkling of Nobels in Literature to keep us going for many years to come.

Since 1951, three South Africans have won the Nobel for Physiology/Medicine, and also two Chemistry prizes. One Egyptian, Ahmed Zewal, also won the Chemistry prize in 1999.

But African racial fundamentalists say these winners were “not properly African”. The closest was Zewal, but he had been plying his trade in the USA for years.

And the South African winners of the Nobels in the sciences were all white. They want a “homegrown African” a quintessential muntu to win the thing.

If for this year a true muntu therefore won the Nobel in Physics and another in Economics, the one that has eluded the continent, then there shall be a big vibe about Africa as a place of science (you don’t hear that often).

•Talking of the Nobel in Economics, few things make noise in the world like big money.

Nigerian billionaire Alhaji Aiko Dangote is Africa’s richest man. If Dangote wants to make a splash for Mother Africa, he should buy a top world company like Microsoft. Just imagine the headlines all over the world and how that would force Africa’s re-evaluation.

GOOD SCANDAL

•The only thing that would beat that, as always, would be a good scandal. It is not easy to find the perfect scandal, but France’s President Hollande could throw us a lifeline.

Hollande has captured the attention of the world the last few days after it emerged that he was cheating on his partner, Valerie Trierweiler, with actress Julie Gayet. The former was so traumatised, she had to be admitted to hospital.

Imagine if it emerged that Hollande the goat had also been having hanky panky with a gorgeous “true” African woman from a former French colony like Côte d’Ivoire or Gabon!

At least we would have weeks of headlines about love, illicit though it be, than about war, death, corruption, and disease.