Senior fellow Charles Kenny is quoted in an article on growing African economies.
Are we living in the “African century?” That is what many people in business and politics have begun to call it. You may not have noticed – because so many headlines are devoted to dramatic events north of the Sahara – that there has been a quieter but more dramatic change for so many of the 900 million people living in the lands to the south. In some ways, this has been the larger revolution.
The economies of many once-destitute African countries are taking off. While the economies of the West are barely moving and China has been stalled, Africa experienced economic growth of 5 per cent this year and is projected by the International Monetary Fund to see 5.7 per cent growth next year. Six of the world’s 10 fastest-growing economies today are in Africa.
As Charles Kenny of the Center for Global Development observed this month, the GDP and growth figures from Africa may be disguising larger improvements. He cites the research by London School of Economics professor Alwyn Young, which suggests that even though per capita income has risen only slightly, actual African household consumption has been rising by between 3.4 and 3.7 per cent each year for the past two decades, and other studies showing that TV ownership has grown from 6 per cent of households to 29 per cent, electricity service has gone from one in 10 households to one in four, and six out of 10 Africans now have a telephone (considerably more than have a toilet).