| | Much has already be made in the post-Africa Commission years of the over-weening optimism regarding growth and development in Africa. The continent, we are now regularly reminded, can indeed claim the 21st century. After all, isn't average per capita growth improving, trade in raw materials once more booming and stability returning to a once unstable and violent continent? Yet despite the pop-star hype and the G8 announcements of policy for Africa, we know all too clearly that the Millennium Developments Goals (a much used but inappropriate measure of 'development') will not be met in the poorest of continents. The real overall gross domestic product rate of growth of 5.7 per cent in 2006 may have been better than that recorded in Latin America. Yet continued external debt of about $250 billion remains. It is like a rock around the necks of Africa's poor and the conditionality it engenders prevents even the few enlightened governments from reducing poverty and promoting sustainable and autonomous development. The reality that the whole of sub-Saharan Africa has an income of not much more than Belgium, blights prospects for human development now and prevents any opportunity to generate growth with social justice from domestically available savings and investment. |
