African economics

Foreign Policy points out that Africa has been growing GDP for the past 10 years, becoming a focus of investment. Not the usual narrative. Of course, the realization that India was no longer starving and that South-East Asia was becoming a booming place took a long time for people to wrap their heads around.

“The state of Africa is a scar on the conscience of the world,” declared British Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2001 — and his was a common refrain. Civil war, economic stagnation, and a high disease burden seemed irreversible, condemning the region to perpetual poverty.

A decade later, however, Africa has outgrown the gloom and doom. Far from the misery-stricken place so often portrayed, Africa today is alive with rising urban centers, a growing consumer class, and sizzling business deals. It’s a land of opportunity.

Africa, in fact, is now one of the world’s fastest-growing economic regions. Between 2000 and 2008, the continent’s collective GDP grew at 4.9 percent per year — twice as fast as in the preceding two decades. By 2008, that put Africa’s economic output at $1.6 trillion, roughly on par with Russia and Brazil. Africa was one of only two regions — Asia being the other — where GDP rose during 2009′s global recession.

Again, remember that Africa as a whole only achieved independence from various colonial regimes in the 60s and 70s. And it’s big! Parts of it are moving forward, others not so fast. This isn’t to downplay the sad stories, but as you can see in the comments of the article I linked, people think of Africa as one big place where all the kids are starving due to a constant barrage of meta-narrative that keep reusing this meme, and if that’s your general impression, all that means is you’re not getting the entire story.

Here, I’ll drive the point home with this slideshow from youtube of Malls in Africa:

Filed under the topic Uncategorized on December 13th 2010 at 10:28 am. You can subscribe to the RSS feed for this entry to keep track of comments. You can also use to trackback.