Africa’s economic fortunes due to better polices – World Bank
The World Bank says better policies explain the improvement in African economic fortunes.
Mr Shanta Devarajan, Chief Economist of the World Bank’s Africa Region, said over the last decade Africa had improved its economic and social policies.
Mr Devarajan was speaking via video conference from the World Bank Office in Washington on Africa’s Pulse report, an analysis of issues shaping Africa’s economic future in Accra on Thursday.
He said despite setbacks in the global economy, growth in Sub Saharan Africa, had remained largely on track and favorable policy environment, strong commodity prices, and domestic demand have continued to support economic activity.
He said sub-Saharan Africa was expected to grow at 4.8 per cent in 2012, broadly unchanged from the 4.9 per cent growth rate in 2011.
“Africa’s economic fortunes also improved at a time when the possibility of a demographic dividend started to emerge,” he noted.
Mr Devarajan said, “resource-rich African countries had to the make conscious choice to invest in better health, education and jobs and less poverty for their people because it would not happen automatically when countries strike it rich.”
He said recent policy interventions in high-income countries would likely contribute to stabilizing the situation in the fourth quarter of 2012 and bolster global demand in 2013.
Ms Punam Chuhan-Pole, Lead Economist at the World Bank, said the new discoveries of oil, gas and other minerals in African countries would generate a wave of significant mineral wealth in the region.
She said the economic importance of natural resources was likely to continue in the medium term in several established oil and mineral producing countries.
“The region’s established oil producers represent less than 10 per cent of the share of global reserve as well as annual production,” he added.
Ms Chuhan-Pole urged African countries to spend their new oil, gas and mineral wealth wisely.
According to the Lead Economist, newly resource-rich countries, strong governance would be key to harnessing resource wealth for development.
Source: GNA