Business
Africa’s economic emergence and the potential for fair development
“The African narrative has changed. Just a while ago, Africa was a place which was exceptional, but for negative reasons. It was a place where there was no growth, no law,” said ADB vice-president Steve Kayizzi-Mugerwa.
“People would say, ‘Yeah, that is Africa’, where there was war, quick death, no accountability,” he said, before adding how things have changed.
“We can no longer blame it on geography, we can no longer blame it on disease, we can no longer blame it on the colonial legacy, because many people have emerged,” the ADB official said, though conflict rages in Somalia and South Sudan and parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Botswana, Ghana, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Kenya, Senegal, Uganda, Tanzania, South Africa and more recently, Ivory Coast, have sparked a more positive outlook on the continent, impressing the financial community with their success in development terms.
“Emergence is a bet on the future,” declared UNDP regional director Abdoulaye Mar Dieye.
The ideas discussed at the conference mean that “economic growth without social benefits is not inevitable”, said Makhtar Diop, vice-president of the World Bank for Africa, adding that the “redistribution of wealth” was vital for “social wellbeing”.
However, participants pointed out that emergent development is hampered by undue dependence on a single resource, like Nigeria and Angola which rely on their oil exports. Massive corruption and a lack of economic integration are also barriers to success.
Capital flight costs Africa between 60 and 100 billion dollars a year, said Dieye of the UNDP. “With good governance, you see what could be injected back into African economies.”
Source: AFP
