Pascal Fletcher
Sub-Saharan Africa’s economic growth should accelerate to more than 5 percent over the next three years, far outpacing the global average, but the region had to do more to convert this into reducing poverty, the World Bank said yesterday.
In its latest Africa’s Pulse analysis of prospects for the region, the bank saw increased investment, high commodity prices and a pick-up in the global economy driving this expected growth surge in the world’s poorest continent.
It said foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows to sub-Saharan Africa were projected to increase to record levels each year over the next three years, reaching $54 billion (R483bn) by 2015.
This compared with $37.7bn in 2012, following a 5.5 percent increase in a year when FDI flows for developing countries fell 6.6 percent on average, the bank added.
The multilateral lender predicted sub-Saharan Africa’s growth would be 4.9 percent, 5.1 percent and 5.2 percent for 2013, 2014 and 2015, respectively.
In 2012, the region’s growth was estimated at 4.7 percent.
“If properly harnessed to unleash their full potential, these trends hold the promise of more growth, much less poverty and accelerating shared prosperity for African countries in the foreseeable future,” Punam Chuhan-Pole, a lead economist in the bank’s Africa department, said.
Compared with Africa’s expected growth spurt, global gross domestic product was projected to expand by 2.4 percent in 2013 and gradually strengthen to 3 percent in 2014 and 3.3 percent in 2015.
The report said a decade of strong growth had reduced poverty in sub-Saharan Africa, with provisional data showing that between 1996 and 2010, the share of Africans living on less than $1.25 a day fell from 58 percent to 48.5 percent.
But World Bank economists cautioned that high inequality and a dependence on mining and mineral exports in many countries had actually dampened the poverty-reducing effect of income growth.
“While the broad picture emerging from the data is that Africa’s economies have been expanding robustly and that poverty is coming down, the aggregate hides a great deal of diversity in performance, even among Africa’s faster growers,” Shanta Devarajan, the World Bank’s chief economist for Africa, said.
Noting that higher growth did not automatically mean less poverty, the report said resource-rich countries such as Gabon, Equatorial Guinea and Nigeria had performed worse than their less resource-blessed fellows.
The World Bank said better administering of mineral wealth, development of agriculture and a careful managing of rapid urbanisation would help African governments seize the opportunity to lift more of their people out of poverty.
But the bank saw some problem spots, singling out labour unrest in South Africa, and political unrest in the Central African Republic, Mali and Togo. – Reuters