africa

Africa at a Fork in the Road: Taking Off or Disappointment Once Again?
conditions have played in Africa’s recent fast growth story, their analyses reveal
that much credit should also be given to homegrown domestic conditions and to
decisions taken by Africans themselves to overcome the economic, social, and
political stagnation they endured from the second half of the 1970s well into the
1990s. The fact that the economic and political fundamentals that lie at the root of
recent successes are essentially an African construction should make us believe
that the newly acquired resilience is likely to be sufficient when tested by a less
propitious international environment.
That sufficiency in resilience is likely but not certain. Recent setbacks in countries
like South Africa, Ghana, and Nigeria, not to speak of those that have suffered the
Ebola outbreak and many other disappointing examples, illustrate how uncertain
the African take-off still is. Alongside their reassurances, our contributors provide
a host of reasons to be concerned about the solidity of some aspects of the recent
African progress. They all seem to agree that now that the external environment
brings significant headwinds to African growth, like declining commodity prices
and slower growth in key trading partners, most countries in the region will need to
reinforce or even redesign a number of their strategies and policies with a view to
fostering employment and productivity across their economies while reducing their
economic duality. The challenge is not only to make sure that some of the basic
macroeconomic fundamentals are restored to the condition they were in before
the global economic turbulence of recent years, but also to embark on a structural
transformation that goes well beyond the efforts applied over the last 20 years.
The most significant transformation needed in Africa consists of strengthening, and
in some cases building, the institutions without which no lasting development will
be possible. This view is clearly voiced by Dercon and his co-author who also suggest
that foreign aid must be used actively to promote such institution building. One
could add that among all the necessary institutional reforms, the most urgent and
important are those pertaining to the rule of law. To make African growth inclusive
and thus give it additional sources of dynamism, the playing field must be leveled
for all Africans and this task starts with a system that provides justice and security
for all, not just a few, of the African people. This ambitious but necessary step would
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