This Is Africa published CGD senior fellow Vijaya Ramachandran's op-ed on Africa's private sector.
From the article:
"No amount of aid can substitute for a thriving private sector, in Africa or anywhere else in the world. A productive business environment encourages growth, learning, investment, and competition on a global scale, whereas an environment of high costs and risks discourages would-be entrepreneurs from establishing a business, investing in it, and increasing its productivity. How does Africa’s business environment measure up?
Not very well. Across Africa, a majority of businesses surveyed cite inadequate power supply as a major or severe constraint. Outages are not just frequent but unpredictable and long, sometimes stretching through the entire work day. Businesses in many countries suffer outages on more than half the working days in the year. Comparable data for China show that the burden of power outages for businesses there is far smaller."