Paper - Initiative for Policy Dialogue

40
Concluding Comments
At the time of the first meeting of the African task force in Manchester at the Brooks
World Poverty Institute, the sense of the meeting was that whilst the recent rapid growth
(prior to the crisis) is welcome, it partly reflects the familiar African cycle of growth
rising and falling with changes in the external environment, particularly commodity
exports and prices. That meeting, occurring, before the crisis, and concluded that there
was little room for complacency: there were concerns about the sustainability of the
higher growth path and that 5 percent was not nearly good enough, especially in light of
continuing rapid population growth in the vicinity of 3 percent per annum. The last
meeting of the Task Force prior to the publication of this book occurred after the global
financial crisis 61 , and reaffirmed the Task Force’s concern about sustainability: Africa
had been badly hit, through no fault of its own. The growth of the Sub-continent’s
economy will be lower that that of its population in 2009. South Africa was especially
badly hit, as GDP fell by some 2 percent 62
Africa has been afflicted with low growth expectations—and these expectations may
have contributed to the sub-continents low performance. The Task Force’s emphasis on
the need to break out of the “low growth expectations equilibrium” has received support
from virtually every study of Africa’s future. Africa should be aiming for growth in
excess of 7 percent. . 63 As we noted earlier, growth of this level will be necessary if the
region is to achieve the Millennium Development Goals—aspirations which it is now not
on target to meet. 64 In the light of the standards set by the successful developing
countries in recent decades, including the African star, Botswana, such aspirations are not
unreasonable. The recent improvement in growth in the years before the global financial
crisis does not diminish the importance of the issue of getting serious, sustained growth
going in Africa; and the impact of the global financial crisis has reemphasized the need to
break out of its dependence on the export of natural resources.
It is our hope that this book, the experiences of the successful countries in other parts
of the world, and the work of the African Task Force, will contribute to the debate on
how this can best be done.
61 The meeting took place in Pretoria, on July 9-10, 2009. .
62 IMF (2009) World Economic Outlook, October 2009
63 This is the sort of growth that the Growth/Spence Commission focuses on. The Commission for Africa
organized by the UK Government speaks of growth targets of 7+ percent in the Region.
64 UN Economic Commission for Africa and African Union Commission, Assessing Progress in Africa
towards the Millennium Development Goals Report 2008, March 2008,
http://www.uneca.org/cfm/2008/docs/AssessingProgressinAfricaMDGs.pdf “The continent’s average
annual growth rate of approximately 5.8 per cent still remains significantly lower than the 7 per cent annual
growth rate required to reduce poverty by half by 2015.” “It shows that progress is being made in a number
of areas such as primary enrolment, gender parity in primary education, malaria deaths, and representation
of women in parliaments. If this rate of progress continues, the continent will be on course to meet a
significant number of the MDGs by the target date. This will still be disappointing since the objective is to
reach all the targets by 2015.”