WHEN you are looking over the beautiful Atlantic Ocean from the harbour in Cape Town, host city of the World Economic Forum on Africa 2015, it is easy to convince yourself that Africa’s long-term outlook is positive.
A number of factors are pulling it in the right direction. The top 10 performing African countries have a combined growth rate that averaged 7.6 percent over the past decade. Nigeria, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, Mozambique, Angola and Zambia also have a combined population of around 700 million people. Even over the past five years, hardly a benign environment, growth has been 6.6 percent.
These stats are impressive. However, it is important to remember that population growth has been around 2.5 percent year on year, which means that per capita growth has been running at around 5 percent.
A 5 percent rate of growth means that gross domestic product (GDP) per capita will more than double in the next 20 years and that in 30 years, GDP in these countries will be where Morocco and Jamaica are today; in 40 years they will reach the same level as Indonesia in 2014.
There will be progress, but not a rapid Asian-esque transformation. If Africa’s top 10 were able to match Asia’s growth rate – closer to 7 percent GDP per capita (implying a 10 percent year-on-year GDP growth rate for the next decade before population growth begins to decelerate) – then they would be able to turn themselves into Colombia and Thailand in 30 years and to Estonia and the Czech Republic in 40.
Africa is growing fast, much faster than it did in the 1980s or 1990s, but the growth rate has to accelerate to deliver what China and the south-east Asian tigers have done. Africa needs to find a road that leads to the 10 percent growth society.
Changing growth models
With the fall in commodity prices, the question of how to boost growth is back at the top of the agenda. But there are reasons to be bearish on a quick recovery in the commodities market. China is changing its growth model and President Xi Jinping has set the country on a more sustainable course.
Meanwhile, other fast-growing Asian nations like India, Indonesia, Bangladesh and the Philippines will not be as resource-hungry as China because the subsidies for intensive consumption in a manufacturing-driven growth model are not there. They will consume natural resources, but not at the same pace or rate as China.
This puts the brakes on Africa’s commodity-driven turbo growth, which is a challenge. But I still think it’s possible to increase growth to Asian levels. This will depend to a larger degree on the ability of governments to implement structural reforms. The road to 10 percent growth must be forged within Africa.
Opportunity to reform
To many, the election result in Nigeria came as a surprise. But from another perspective, the change of government from Goodluck Jonathan to Muhammadu Buhari was a sign that Africa is maturing.
When people are simultaneously becoming better educated and more urbanised, while information flows more freely and human rights issues are at the forefront, it is natural that there will be more regular transitions between governments.
You can hardly hold Jonathan responsible for the collapse of the oil price, but Nigeria could have done more to build buffers against the various crises facing the country. The conflict with Boko Haram has escalated in the north, import prices have been pushed up by the depreciation of the naira, corruption is high and poverty reduction has been slower than in other countries.
It could be argued that the best thing for Nigeria now would be if Jonathan joins former president Olusegun Obasanjo as a respected leader in a peer role.
Meanwhile, if Buhari can assume the role of economic reformer, then this will be a game-changer. Low oil prices can be seen as an opportunity to reform energy subsidies, as President Joko Widodo has done in Indonesia, to strengthen public finances.
The fact that naira has depreciated heavily could be used as an opportunity to open up and diversify the economy. Nigerian industry must be much more competitive so tariffs and a myriad of barriers to trade can be dismantled. The weak currency could also boost profitability in the agricultural sector and become a building block for more inclusive growth that does a better job of reducing poverty.
A significant step towards the 10 percent growth society is to end ‘winner-takes-all’ democracy and the concept of an ‘our turn to eat’ political system. If this can become the norm, then Africa will take a huge step towards reaching 10 percent growth.
Lessons from China
There have been concerns about China’s increasing role in Africa. Let me take the opposite position. China’s economy grew by 10 percent year on year for four decades, and the country achieved the fastest transformation from poverty to prosperity.
Africa needs to become more Chinese. Here are four reasons why:
n China let market forces work in the agricultural sector. The household responsibility system – which gave households relative autonomy over land and crops – and subsequent reforms led to 15 percent annual growth in agriculture over the years that followed. When the same happens in Africa, with the deregulation of coffee in Rwanda an example, the results will come.
n China did its best to protect competitiveness by pushing its currency to an artificially low level.
A weak currency is often good for farmers who export their produce but problematic for importers in urban areas. Sometimes, for example, if a government is worried about political turmoil in its urban areas, a strong currency to subsidise food imports seems logical, although it does hurt the majority of farmers.
But an artificially weak currency – even if it might upset the US and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – is essential for an export-led growth model and only export orientation can bring about 10 percent growth. African currencies are now weak. Keep them weak and use this as an opportunity to carry out structural reforms and remove barriers to trade.
n China has forced up its savings rate. It peaked at 50 percent before the crisis and in the mid-1990s it hovered around 40 percent. To some extent this has been a result of a combination of a weak exchange rate, low interest rates and financial repression.
With high savings rates it’s also possible to mobilise the necessary domestic capital to sustain high investment rates.
Savings rates in the Asian growth miracle countries have in general been high and investment levels are often between 30 percent to 40 percent of GDP. No country has grown for a sustained period without investment above 30 percent of GDP, but the savings rate in Africa is more often close to 20 percent. Of course, high investment brings with it a risk of large current account deficits and the danger that a country could run into a balance of payments crisis. High domestic savings counter that risk.
n An essential feature of the Chinese road to 10 percent growth is openness to technology. Technological innovations are slow and costly. The good news, however, is that you don’t need to innovate; you can just copy at very low cost.
This is the Silk Road to a 10 percent growth society. It’s possible for Africa’s top 10 countries to move in this direction, but there are major obstacles to overcome. The macroeconomic environment has recently taken a more challenging turn. The currency turmoil that will probably follow the Federal Reserve’s decision to increase rates will also affect Africa.
Anders Borg is the chairman of the World Economic Forum’s Global Financial System Initiative.