Plenty of people are quick to dismiss the African growth miracle as nothing more than a short-term boost from foreign aid, or at best from rising commodity prices. They still complain that the great capitalist powers are keeping Africa down, and the old colonial powers are being replaced by newer ones as China takes ever bigger stakes in the continent. But none of that is really true. What is powering African growth are the same crucial factors that powered growth in Europe 150 years ago, North America 120 years ago and much of Asia in the decades after the Second World War. Industrialisation and free markets. True, Africa still has plenty of problems and its development is still fragile but, if it can keep going the way it is right now, there is no reason why it can’t be the great growth story of the first half of this century. Economists specialising in the region refer to what they call the ‘BBC syndrome’ to explain why African growth remains one of the under-appreciated factors in the global economy. Mainstream news broadcasters spend so much time focusing on regional wars and famines they miss out on most of what is happening in what is, after all, a very big continent.
Posted on: Sun, 21 Sep 2014 17:01:49 +0000