Been enjoying Africa? The six-part wildlife series has been tending to the nation’s post-Christmas misery with all of the gorgeous syrups of exoticism: animals in far-away places going through the cycles of birth and death, panoramic vistas and wide-open spaces, the natural world in all of its astounding panoply. You might not have had the masochistic commitment to catch every episode, but you are missing out if you don’t even try one. The BBC wildlife department know when they release these things that they’ve got another master-piece on their hands. Ground-breaking photography? Check. Extraordinary moments? Check. David Attenborough’s tenderly inimitable vocal cords? Of course. There’s something suspiciously facile about output that never fails. The BBC might as well provide a consumer guarantee to everyone tuning in. You will find gorgeous images, you will be enraptured, more alarmingly – you will be moved. An elephant keening over its dying calf is really quite strong stuff for a family show.

What other ways has Africa impressed itself upon your consciousness of late? Mali and Algeria have been in the news. Another war is starting. Images of men with guns ravaging the cradle continent of our species are being carried into western homes by television airwaves and internet cables. The printed page still plays a role. Of course, these pictures are only a small addition to the mental furniture. Most of us have a stock of images of impoverished Africa lurking somewhere in the old armoire. I always think of library footage of Michael Buerk during the Ethiopian famine, somehow mixed up with both modern day news reports and more than one Bond film. And I have read Heart of Darkness.

Africa is indisputably the world’s poorest continent. Here are some statistics: Of the 25 poorest countries in the world by GNI, more than 20 are African. The average income is more than 30 times lower than that in the Eurozone. Even comparatively wealthy South Africa’s GDP per capita is scarcely half that of formerly communist Poland. Even at strong current growth rates, it would take well-over 30 years for Africa to reach the income levels of Latin America today. By then, of course, the rest of the world will have left Africa behind, and it’s not like Latin America is rich in any case.

When you see a barrage of information like that you know that the statistics are less damned lies than facets of the same overwhelming truth. Africa is poor. Many of its democracies are flawed as well. Freedom house regards only 19 of sub-Saharan Africa’s 49 states as ‘full electoral democracies’.

But that doesn’t mean that things are not moving in the right direction. There are notable success stories. Countries like Ghana and Botswana have established credible democracies. Perhaps more importantly in a region with more basic economic needs, growth has been strong. In 2010, despite the economic horror show in our neck of the woods, Kenya grew 5.3%, once war-torn Rwanda 7.5%. And this isn’t even a recent pick-up in a few lucky places. In the decade up to 2007 African growth averaged 5.4% per annum. I wonder how much Bob Geldof’s Live 8 helped with that.

Africa has a long way to go, but it is chugging along rather nicely. In a global outlook plagued by sclerosis in Europe, deadlock in Washington and worries about credit bubbles in China many find Africa a notable bright spot. There is no surer sign of this than the growth in investment funds to Africa. Far-sighted fund managers smell opportunity.

The day is still far-off when all of your consumer items are likely to boast ‘Made in Nigeria’ and the like. African growth will not mean ship-building or big smoky factories for a good while yet. Instead it will be about more modest moves into activities like export processing or garment production. The continent faces particular challenges. Look on a map and you will see how much of Africa lies inland, far from the trading opportunities of the sea. Even in China they have never cracked the problem of inland poverty.

Africa’s very real problems are not easily remedied. Bob Geldof might call for more aid, but there is no clear evidence that more aid leads to better development prospects. Government inefficiency, aid dependence and (for you economists) the currency inflating effects of ‘Dutch disease’ might all be culpable. The protections enjoyed by developed world farmers are certainly damaging, preventing many African farmers from exporting their crops. But even trade liberalisation should be handled with care. A few years back the UN ran a simulation of what would happen if trade were partially liberalised, i.e. freer than now but still with restrictions. They found that Africa would actually lose out (food prices would increase with the extra foreign demand, reducing living standards for Africans).

So Africa is poor. Some of Africa is war-torn. Most of Africa has a long way to go. But what we don’t see reported nearly enough is that there are also successful African states enjoying strong growth and good prospects. And tourists should broaden their sights beyond the safari world of Africa too. Anyone for the medieval rock-hewn churches of Lalibela? Have you even heard of them before?

The day is still far-off when all of your consumer items are likely to boast ‘Made in Nigeria’ and the like. African growth will not mean ship-building or big smoky factories for a good while yet. Instead it will be about more modest moves into activities like export processing or garment production. The continent faces particular challenges. Look on a map and you will see how much of Africa lies inland, far from the trading opportunities of the sea. Even in China they have never cracked the problem of inland poverty.

Africa’s very real problems are not easily remedied. Bob Geldof might call for more aid, but there is no clear evidence that more aid leads to better development prospects. Government inefficiency, aid dependence and (for you economists) the currency inflating effects of ‘Dutch disease’ might all be culpable. The protections enjoyed by developed world farmers are certainly damaging, preventing many African farmers from exporting their crops. But even trade liberalisation should be handled with care. A few years back the UN ran a simulation of what would happen if trade were partially liberalised, i.e. freer than now but still with restrictions. They found that Africa would actually lose out (food prices would increase with the extra foreign demand, reducing living standards for Africans).

So Africa is poor. Some of Africa is war-torn. Most of Africa has a long way to go. But what we don’t see reported nearly enough is that there are also successful African states enjoying strong growth and good prospects. And tourists should broaden their sights beyond the safari world of Africa too. Anyone for the medieval rock-hewn churches of Lalibela? Have you even heard of them before?

Allegedly, everyone at Oxford will leave with one of the following: a Blue, a Spouse or a First. When I was first informed of this it induced horror in my Prelim-fuelled brain and, to be quite frank, it still does. Six months’ later and Prelims are done, results have been had and subsequently forgotten – much like our three-month summer – Michaelmas…happened…and Halfway Hall is fast approaching for second year students, yet I am still no closer to achieving any of the above.

Firstly, a Blue. Well, it’s an absolute to joke to even suggest that I might play some form of sport, let alone be good at. I’m the girl who fell over in the 300m race in the infamous Sports’ Day of 2007 (ironically whilst I was in 2nd place – the only time I’ve ever been in a poll position for anything and victory was whipped from underneath my feet, literally). I’m the girl who accidentally hit a teacher (who was stood at the side completely away from the game) in the face with a ball during a game of Benchball/Dodgeball/something I am too inept to remember. I’m the girl who broke her nose in a soft play centre aged 17 (there was a good reason for me being there, promise). Basically, me and sport aren’t a great match – ironic use of terminology.

So that leads me on to the next expectation: a spouse. Hilary 2013 saw the return to college of my predominantly single friendship group; three weeks’ later and it’s all changed. What is it with spring that seems to make everyone date-obsessed and loved up? I’ve been reliably informed that it’s to do with New Year’s resolutions and chemicals in the brain, but I stopped listening at the word ‘chemicals’. Either way, it happens! Whether it’s the result of alcohol-fuelled declarations of love at the latest bop, drunken fumbles in Wahoo (or Camera if you’ve got slightly more class – I go to Wahoo), or a note posted under your door following a compliment on the brightness of someone’s onesie, new couples seem to be popping up all over the place. That is apart from in my case where I’ve been labelled ‘Forever Alone’ and may have to marry my GBF to dispel all further hilarious banter.

And finally, a First. Well, I’ve got more hope of achieving the first two expectations in the same week than getting a First. Unfortunately I can’t think of any semi-amusing anecdotes to put in here because by now I’ve firmly labelled myself as one thing: a failure.

It’s not that those of us without one of the three expectations in the bag aren’t trying, it’s just that they aren’t attainable goals for all of us. 

So what do us ‘failures’ leave Oxford with (other than friends and memories etc)? An inferiority complex? A penchant for red trousers and annoying abbreviations such as ‘pidge’ and ‘plodge’ which will never be useful in the ‘Real World’? My answer: a sense of achievement.

Oxford is renowned for those of ‘exceptional abilities’, but what about those of us who are, quite frankly, less exceptional? One of my primary school teachers once referred to me as ‘decidely average’ at a parents’ evening, sparking rage in my parents and a highly smug attitude in myself when this was revealed to me upon receiving my Oxford acceptance letter; I am under no illusion that I am above ‘average’ within society, but I am similarly under illusion that I am below ‘average’ here. Nevertheless, I am still approaching the halfway point of my Oxford degree. 

My degree thus far may have contained far more references to my ‘effort’, and often somewhat more derogative commentary, than to my ‘excellent argument’, but this is still an achievement – and I challenge anyone to tell me that it’s not. It’s not always about being the best or having something concrete to prove for your efforts – such as a Blue, a spouse or a First – rather it can just be about doing it at all.

Since the start of my degree, according to my very rough calculations, I have read 540 books for essays alone. At this point I would calculate my contact time, but I do History and that would be embarrassing for myself and disrespectful to all the ‘scientists’ reading this. Nonetheless, I’ve still done it and have managed to stave off what sometimes feels like an inevitable mental breakdown.

I might leave Oxford without ever achieving one of the three expectations I have discussed but the fact still stands: I will still, in 17-months’ time, leave here with a degree from Oxford University. This might not be enough for you, but I think it’s FINALLY becoming enough for me.

As another New Year begins on the Chinese calendar, we might ask, how might the Snake improve upon the Dragon? Not only does the snake seem to be a disappointing poorer cousin of the Chinese king of the beasts, but judging from the zodiac myth, it also seems less likeable. The snake cannot fly or breathe fire, and unlike the Dragon who earns its place on the zodiac with a benevolent deed – Dragon helps Rabbit to cross the river by blowing it onwards – it wormed its way onto the calendar through cunning, usurping the Horse from 6^th place on the zodiac cycle by hiding under its hoof.

But national symbol and sacred creature though it may be, the Dragon is legendary, and only gives an illusion of being a tough act to follow. What actually marked the Year of the Dragon was America’s reclaiming of 1st place on the Olympic Medals Table from China, the nation’s most serious and sensational scandal (Bo Xilai and Gu Kailai) in decades, and the lowest growth rate in a century. China is still huffing, but seems to have lost its puff. The confidence it exudes when presenting itself immaculately before the world has failed to be substantiated by its own worrying internal affairs.

Losing the puff is not necessarily disadvantageous. The Snake is resourceful, down to earth (literally), and real. It does not need to puff to get its way. Perhaps we will get practical solutions to China’s problems, not high-blown rhetoric. Threats (aka to Japan) would be hissed, not howled. This change in character is dependent on the new Chairman, Xi Jinping. Although Xi is himself a snake – surely there can be no better year to start your term as China’s leader than your own zodiac year – whether he will, like his zodiac animal under the horse’s hoof, put himself in uncomfortable positions instead of safely following the ‘party line’, remains to be seen. He needs to allow some transparency and criticism in order to make an end to government corruption achievable. So far he’s encouraged “self-criticism”, but when will criticism be permitted and when will this seedy river of corruption concealed by a mire of censorship finally be breached?

Perhaps this Snake should take note from one in the BBC wildlife documentary ‘Africa’. The situation is stark: To ensure the survival of the next generation, the mother snake almost overheats herself to death to provide the warmth to incubate her eggs. Even if she survives the thermal stress her broken body will take years to recover, during which she will not be able to rear any offspring. And even if her eggs survive to hatch, only one in a hundred will live to adulthood. And yet the mother risks all for the chance of a single snake to continue her line. It remains to be seen whether Xi will likewise brave the heat of the media and of his own party in order to address the needs of his people.

One prevalent danger remains; the snake ambushes its victim, and bites off more than it can chew. If you’ve watched a snake swallowing a gazelle whole in the African bush, you get the idea. But China doesn’t have to have the UN, Africa and the global economy in a stranglehold just to flex its muscle – to continue the analogy, the mother snake’s imprint of her scales on the eggs as a result of pressing them with warmth is as David Attenborough says “an indication of the strength of her embrace”, not her killer instinct. In the same way, China must use its strength and power constructively and selflessly, not with brutality and greed.

Last time the Year of the Snake came around, it was hardly a time to show the humbler side of China. July 2001 saw China awarded the Olympic Games for 2008, and preparation began to create the biggest show-stopper in Games history, at the expense of homes, freedom of speech, and Beijing’s oldest Opera House. Two previous notable Years of the Snake have also given China mixed blessings: 1989, the year the people found its voice, but also the year of the Tiananmen massacre, and 1893, the birth-year of Mao, who was both China’s liberator and oppressor.

When Xi Jinping officially becomes Chairman in March, he will have the duty of managing not only China’s progress, but also its PR. He has a chance to change the West’s concept of China. Just as not all dragons are plundering hoarders, so not all snakes are venomous vipers. Xi Jinping may not be elevated to such a patriarchal figurehead as Deng (Xiao Ping) the Dragon, but he is not the sullied snake Mao either. And he can prove that, as in the myth where Snake snatches 6th place from Horse, he can do one better than his predecessor Hu (Jin Tao) the Horse. As China ushers in the New Year of the Snake on February 10, we might wonder what resolutions Xi will be making.

David Davis is a commanding presence. Tall and authoritative, yet simultaneously ordinary and affable, he has that prize-winning skill of making whoever he is speaking to feel as if they are only person in the room. Speaking in Oxford on what he saw as the negative effects of the government’s rise in tuition fees, Davis managed to connect with his audience and speak to each member as if he understood their problems, performing the role of populist to perfection.

His media reputation might easily prompt those who haven’t met him to think otherwise. His self-description as “a massive Thatcherite” at first seems convincing: he voted against the repeal of Section 28 and supports the restoration of the death penalty, a tough law and order policy, and his former leader’s free-market economics of lower taxes and privatisation. And yet, Davis’s own political views are in fact at once more subtle and complex. A champion of civil liberties and an opponent of the rise in tuition fees he is not so much the classic right- wing Thatcherite many would have him be, but a more a tangled web of contradictions.

Brought up in a single- parent family in Tooting, he is able to speak with authority when he talks of those young people in Britain who are brought up in poor areas and go to what he calls “poor comprehensives and second- rate universities”. I started our conversation by talking to him about the problems involved with a university education in Britain today. For him, there is no doubt that there is, in Britain “an obsession with universities” and that the Labour aim of sending 50 per cent of school- leavers to university was “guaranteed to cause social and financial problems.” Davis believes that the idea that going to university automatically improves your life chances is all too often a “confidence trick” that can create significant opportunity costs for young people.

I asked him whether it concerned him that his party’s front bench represents a far cry from his own upbringing, being dominated by people who were privately educated, went to Oxbridge, and have of- ten never worked outside of politics. Image: Office of David Davis “Not necessarily”, he responded. For him, the One Nation concept of noblesse oblige is understandable – so long as the electors as well as the elected comprehend it – particularly since for many MPs it was grounded on their experiences in the Second World War. For Davis then, whilst Margaret Thatcher was “very good for the working classes”, by taking the ‘class’ out of the Tory party she “broke the mould” and made rebuilding it difficult.

When I put it to Davis that his 2005 Conservative Party leadership contest was principally one of Cameron’s modernisation against his more Thatcherite, right-wing conservatism, he immediately retorted by telling me that the domain name for his leadership campaign was ‘modernconservative.com’. He described himself as one of the “originators of the detoxification idea” though crucially for him, the real toxification problem was different from David Cameron’s interpretation. For Davis, it was principally based around money, and the Tory party coming across as “a bunch of rich people with friends in the city who they looked after” a conception which, he believes, stemmed from the sleaze scandals of the 1990s and the Major government’s catastrophe in the 1992 ERM crisis, when the Tory party threw “two centuries of economic credibility out of the window.”

We talked of Cameron’s idea of detoxification and whether it has worked. For Davis it was characterised by his ‘vote blue go green’ image, “huskies and a metropolitan agenda of gay rights”. He quipped that he agreed with his leader’s ‘hug a hoodie’ idea, the only difference being that he would hug “harder and longer”. According to Davis however, Cameron’s detoxification has principally failed because it addressed the wrong issue. By failing to ad- dress the Conservative Party’s public perception when it came to money, detoxification has proved pointless.

What then of Cameron in coalition? For Davis, there are “two models of a coalition and the government is metamorphosing from one to another”. The first, one of “lowest common denominator compromises on everything” is what he believes the government started with. The second, of each party adopting “distinctive positions”, which he feels the coalition has more recently moved to, is one that requires a “mechanism for differences of opinion”, something which Davis advised Cameron to allow for in a phone call the day after the 2010 election. This is something that the Coalition has, according to Davis, not yet provided for.

The Coalition’s biggest problem is, so far as Davis is concerned, its economic policy. For him, “growth is incredibly important to the deficit reduction” and “lower taxes and fierce deregulation” are the way forward. Cuts in national insurance and in capital gains levels are proposals that he believes would help with this. Davis feels that the Conservative Party needs to move back towards an emphasis on small business and an entrepreneurial spirit. Osborne and Cameron are, he says, “susceptible to arguments from big business despite it only providing about one quarter of the jobs in the country.”

For Davis, the “Tory party needs a civilising influence from time to time”, but that has not been provided by the Liberal Democrats, though he feels it should have been. He can see the possibility of a Liberal Democrat internal split and believes that those he calls the “orange book Lib Dems” (such as David Laws) could play the civilising role that the Conservatives need.

Looking towards the 2015 election, a significant possibility for Davis is that the Liberal Democrats will want to sell themselves as the party that “moderates the extremes of the other two parties” – a role that will naturally involve trying to get closer to Labour.

When I ask him about his own future he says, “Look, if I’m needed I’m here, but if I’m not I don’t care.” On the suggestion of his returning to office as a way for David Cameron to reconnect with the right wing of his party, he says he wouldn’t go back “just to be a mouthpiece” or for “symbolic reasons”. Indeed, after talking to Davis it is hard to imagine what at all he could symbolise.

His right-wing media stereotype is shattered at soon as you talk to him. His pragmatic, cool and charming manner makes him impossible to categorise. He himself put it better than any- one else ever could: “I’m a very quirky stereo- type,” he told me. That, I am sure, is how David Davis shall remain.