Paper - Initiative for Policy Dialogue

4
there were good prospects for sustained growth and poverty reduction in several African
countries.
The puzzle of Africa’s growth has, of course, been a subject of intense debate,
and alternative views blaming poor governance, an unfortunate location (geography), or
history (colonial legacy), especially after the failure of the simplistic formula of “get
prices right, privatize and liberate the magic of the market”. As we explain below, most
of the members of the Task Force found these explanations or, at any rate, the importance
often accorded to them, unpersuasive. Unfortunately, too much of the policy discourse
on Africa has been too dominated by these perspectives.
The need to widen the policy debate and space in Africa and some crucial ways of
doing so are the dominant themes of the collection of essays that follow. In this
introductory chapter, we will not only draw on them and aim to pull together many of
their threads but also try to reflect some of the highlights of the rich and wide-ranging
discussions that took place in meetings of the Task Force. 4
There was, of course, no unanimity of views, and later in this introduction, we
comment on one key debate. The discussion was lively and at times contentious. 5 But
what was clear was that it was imperative that new strategies be placed on the policy
agenda for African countries, if the region is to break out of its “low-growth-and-low
expectations equilibrium”. And faster growth was necessary to make adequate progress in
reducing poverty: if Africa is to reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) even
a few years after 2015, approximately a growth rate of around 7 percent is required, a
number that corresponds to the best performance that average has been able to achieve 6 .
Complexities of African Development
The question of interpreting Africa’s developmental experience is not as simple as
starkly posed above because of the diversity of African countries and their experiences.
The region includes the fastest growing economy in the world during 1960-2000:
Botswana. It also includes the long-standing success story of Mauritius and other
4 These meetings benefited not only from the participation of the authors of the papers included here, other
scholars and staff of development agencies but also a number of distinguished past and present African
policy makers. One of them, Kwesi Botchwey, formerly finance minister of Ghana, is a co-chair of the
Task Force .. For a list of participants see Annex …..
5 The broad thrust of the discussions coincides with that of this volume, reflecting not only the fact that the
contributors to this volume were participants in the meetings but also that several of their contributions
benefited from the debate, including critical questioning of their positions. They also benefited from
comments by a number of referees who were kind and generous enough to provide comments on various
papers included here and who remain anonymous to the authors. For that reason we cannot name them but
would like to express our deep gratitude to them.
6 Africa’s GDP growth averaged at least 7 percent in three years since 1960: in 1969 (7.0%), 1970 (7.8%)
and 1979 (7.2%). More recently the figure was around 6 percent in both 2006 and 2007