africa

Africa at a Fork in the Road: Taking Off or Disappointment Once Again?
remain secure and so encourage those with capital to invest and entrepreneurs to
find ways to elicit more output from the inputs they possess. Insofar as we have
identified a plausibly causal relationship between the changes in Africa’s political
institutions and the growth of total factor productivity, we have found evidence in
support of these arguments.
We conclude by addressing a last question: How comprehensive and enduring
does Africa’s growth appear to be? By way of response, note the coefficients on the
dependency ratio. While some, such as Young (2012), point to the “demographic
dividend” that Africa might accrue as a result of an earlier decline in mortality rates,
recent reports highlight the persistence of high birth rates and therefore the persistence
of high dependency ratios (Guengant and May, 2013). Our results confirm
the negative impact of high dependency ratios on increases in per capita incomes.
They also suggest (subject to the effect of possible measurement error) a positive
impact of petroleum exports on Africa’s growth rate, but with the slowing growth of
emerging markets and the increase in the domestic production of energy in North
America, the impact of such exports is likely to decline. Lastly, note the significant
relationship between rainfall and growth in Africa’s economies—reminding us of the
continuing importance of the agricultural sector and that while Africa’s economies
may be growing, their structure has yet to be transformed.
Given the results of our analysis, moreover, it is particularly sobering to view our
core finding in light of political trends in Africa. For several years, Freedom House
has decried the decline in the quality of political and civil rights on the continent. As
stated in its report for 2010:
2009 marked the fourth consecutive year in which global freedom
suffered a decline—the longest consecutive period of setbacks for
freedom in the nearly 40-year history of the report. These declines
were most pronounced in Sub-Saharan Africa.
As captured in Figure 12.13, according to Freedom House in 2012, a larger percentage
of the states in Africa than in the world as a whole moved to lower levels
of political and civil liberties and a smaller percentage ascended to higher levels.
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