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See also Global Monitoring Report 2008
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Sub-Saharan Africa is a highly complex Region of 47 countries with 7 distinctly different colonial histories. It is also highly diverse, with more than 700 million people of at least 1,000 different ethnic groups. The Region is a critical development priority—it has some of the world’s poorest countries and during the past two decades the number of poor in the Region has doubled, to 300 million—more than 40 percent of the Region’s population.
Agriculture is a critical sector for the Region. It accounts for 30 percent of GDP and employs 75 percent of the population. Agricultural development can make a major contribution to poverty alleviation and growth. Increasing agricultural productivity is key to improved food security for both rural and urban poor. Assistance to Agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa

July 8
Africa shines
An unexpected bright spot in the global economy
(Economist.com) The sight of the leaders of several African countries arriving in Tokyo this week to demand that the leaders of the G8 honour their promises on aid, debt relief and trade prompts many competing thoughts. What is the purpose of this elite club of mostly rich nations, for a start? And are its promises worth the paper they are written on, given that all the hullabaloo surrounding the 2005 G8 Summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, where many of those promises were made, seems ultimately to have achieved so little? So much for the G8’s heavily publicised pledge to “Make Poverty History”.
Besides, if there really is a need for a high-level global economic talking-shop, why is there not at least one representative from the economies of the “South” to sit formally at the conference table, rather than having to lobby ignominiously from the outside?
July 7
Is Africa recovering?
The World Bank’s latest report on the political state of Africa
(The Economist) The World Bank’s governance indicators may be imperfect but they are a useful tool for investors.
Politicians, donors and businesspeople with African investments increasingly claim that conditions on the ground are improving: economic policies are improving, economies are growing faster, the region is more politically stable and governance is getting better. Some of these assertions are broadly or partially correct, but the World Bank’s 2008 report on governance indicators—Governance Matters—suggests that, on governance at least, such optimism should be tempered, since African aggregate indicators worsened some 7.6% between 1996, when the governance indicators were first compiled, and 2000. There has been a modest improvement since then, but the total index is still 5% lower now than in 1996.
G8 backpedals on $25 billion for Africa
In repealing their pledge to provide $25 billion annually to Africa by 2010, the G8 nations are backpedaling on one of former U.K. Prime Mminister Tony Blair’s greatest foreign policy achievements, a plan bolstered by current U.K. leader Gordon Brown. A communiqué reveals that a budget summit planned for July fails to include the much praised aid amount. Financial Times (6/30)
June 16
Tanzania’s economy is growing but its deficit is worrying
Tanzanian growth is forecast to average some 8% over the medium term, but the country’s current-account deficit and low levels of domestic revenue are worrying.
(The Economist) As they strengthen, African economies are becoming more alike—and thus, unsurprisingly, face similar problems. Inflation, driven by fuel and food prices, is becoming a problem once again; the revenue base may have grown but it is still too narrow; countries remain heavily reliant on aid at a time when donors are failing to meet their disbursement targets and are becoming increasingly critical of politicians’ failure to improve governance; infrastructure is weak (which is one reason why GDP growth is so dependent on capital investment and employment); and productivity is stagnating, especially in agriculture.
June 5
African farmers ‘adjusting to climate change’
Rural African farmers are already adapting to climate change, according to case studies in Benin, Kenya and Malawi.
(SciDev.net)The studies, carried out by local environmental groups for the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), found that farmers are using locally-relevant methods to adjust to their unpredictable environments.
Almost all African agriculture relies on rainwater rather than irrigation, but all farmers interviewed said erratic rainfall patterns and less predictable growing seasons are triggering major changes in farming practices, such as a switch to faster-growing crops or varieties.
Increasing capacity to cope with change is also important. Some farmers are clubbing together to build rain-harvesting tanks and setting up joint savings clubs.
May 29
Backgrounder: African Agriculture
Global food prices have skyrocketed in the past year, sparking riots in 2008 in cities from Egypt to Haiti. Rising prices pose a particular threat in sub-Saharan Africa, where conflicts and drought exacerbate the affects of high prices. Though sub-Saharan Africa has the potential to become an agriculture powerhouse, crop yields for much of the region are a fraction of those in the rest of the world. Agronomists say the continent needs to drastically increase its agriculture productivity, and recommend a range of options—from high-yield seeds to fertilizer to improved infrastructure—to spur an agricultural revolution in Africa. The region’s economic development may depend on such a revolution, experts say, but it will require strong support from individual African governments.
It’s sushi for Africa’s leaders
THE copper is used in computers. The nickel is for batteries. Tungsten is used to fortify steel for cars. Japan buys much of its rare metal from China to feed its electronics and car industries. But as booming China has begun to close the spigot to safeguard its own supplies, Japan, the world’s second biggest economy, has been forced to look elsewhere for an alternative source—in Africa.
On May 28th it hosted the Tokyo International Conference on African Development, a quadrennial event since 1993. About 40 African heads of state or government attended. Japan’s prime minister, Yasuo Fukuda, promised to meet each one individually, as well as Bono, a pop singer, without whom no such gathering on Africa is complete.
But whereas in previous meetings aid topped the agenda, this time it has been all about the hunt for natural resources—with Africa’s best interests at heart, of course.
May 22nd 2008
Stability in Africa
Unpredictable politics is a constraint on African economic growth
(The Economist) International organisations continue to minimise the economic impact of political instability Africa. This is unwise.
The 2008 African Economic Outlook, prepared by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the African Development Bank and the UN Economic Commission for Africa, is the latest in a series of reports on the African economy and, as such, tends to cover much the same ground as the IMF and World Bank. The special section on technical and vocational skills development adds value, since it draws attention to a much neglected constraint on regional development. However, perhaps the most innovative aspect of the series of reports, now in their 12th year, is the index of political troubles. According to this, most countries, including post-conflict states like Angola, Liberia and Mozambique, are enjoying growing stability. The situation is “incontestably better” than a decade ago, the report says, claiming that after five years of civil war, the situation in Côte d’Ivoire has stabilised somewhat with the signing of the Ouagadougou agreement in March 2007 ahead of elections due this October.
Foreign Policy May/June 2008
When China Met Africa (complete article available only to subscribers to FP)
It seemed a perfect match: A growing country looking for markets and influence meets a continent with plenty of resources but few investors. Now that China has moved in, though, its African partners are beginning to resent their aggressive new patron. What happens when the world’s most ambitious developing power meets the poverty, corruption, and fragility of Africa? China is just beginning to find out.
May 8
Islamic banks join in the race for Africa
(The Economist) CHINA is not the only financial powerhouse with its hungry eye on Africa. Flush with oil wealth, the Gulf states, too, are spying profitable opportunities among the hundreds of millions of Muslims who live just a hop across the Red Sea. Africa’s economies are growing fast, thanks in large part to the commodities boom.
Investments set to grow in African agriculture
Skyrocketing food prices have prompted several international companies to consider investing more in African farming, the Financial Times reports. The Common Fund for Commodities, a United Nations branch, said it has received inquiries from multinational corporations interested in developing new African agriculture projects. Financial Times (5/7)
Africa Plays the Rice Card
(Foreign Policy May 2008) Consider the case of Uganda. The country’s rice output has risen 2½ times since 2004, according to the Ministry of Trade. Rice production is expected to reach an astonishing 180,000 metric tons this year, up from 135,000 in 2006 and 102,000 in 2005. Consumption of imported rice, meanwhile, fell by half from 2004 to 2005 alone, and by half again from 2005 to 2007.
Uganda’s importers, seeing the shift, have invested in new mills in the country, expanding employment and creating competition for farmer output, thereby improving prices. New mills, meanwhile, lowered the cost of bringing domestic rice to market. While people in developing countries across the globe are clamoring about the sharp rise in food prices, Ugandans are still paying about the same for rice as they always have. And Uganda is poised to start exporting rice within East Africa—and beyond.
May 1
Annan urges “green revolution” for Africa
Africa has the potential to double or triple its food production, but to get there its farmers need much more help, former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan told the BBC. The goal of such a “green revolution” would be for Africa to become able to sustain itself and not rely on increasingly expensive food imports, he said. BBC (5/1)
April 25
In Kenya, lack of arable land adds to woes
At the core of many of Kenya’s problems, including its recent bloody political conflict, is the fact that it has too little arable land, the Financial Times reports in this analysis. This has added to disputes between tribes, and prevents many families from pursuing their own livelihoods. Kenya’s leaders are considering land reform, but they differ sharply on how it should be done. Financial Times (4/25)
April 17
An up-beat assessment of Africa
FOR those used to thinking of Africa as a fiscal bucket with a hole in it, a new IMF report on the continent makes for a heartening read. Although the fund is cautious about some of the effects a global economic slowdown might have on Africa, particularly if oil prices remain high and other commodity prices slide, it argues that, in macroeconomic terms at least, Africa has never had it so good.
Sub-Saharan Africa’s GDP is expected to grow by 6.5% this year, thanks largely to oil-producing economies such as Nigeria and Angola. That compares with growth of 6.6% in 2007. Arguably more significant than the petroleum bonanza are the massive capital inflows Africa can continue to expect as the last frontier market. Foreign investment and loans have risen from $11 billion in 2000 to $53 billion in 2007, mainly but not wholly in extractive industries. Portfolio flows into high-interest African government bonds increased by 14 times between 2003 and 2006, to $23 billion. Just the beginning of a coming boom, reckon bouncy African financiers.
April 10
A new scramble for Africa means that an old historical relationship is taking on a fresh significance
(The Economist) India hosted the first India-Africa summit, with 14 African leaders attending. The event reflected India’s growing commercial interest in Africa; it was also deemed an attempt to counter the growing influence of China in the continent. See article
8 April
Global Monitoring Report
Spotlight on the Environment: Sub-Saharan Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa has great potential for renewable energy use and has rich natural resources in some countries. But the region has pressing environment-related problems such as climate change vulnerability, diseases made worse by environmental factors, unsustainable resource use, and low state attention to environment priorities.
Spotlight on the Environment: Middle East & North Africa
The Middle East & North Africa region is off track on an important environment-related target – to halve the proportion of people without sustainable access to an improved source of water and basic sanitation facilities by 2015. The region has also increased its carbon dioxide emissions, faces diminishing critical per capita water resources, and is at risk on several fronts from climate variability. Environmental sustainability is a major issue in the region, which is, on average, not offsetting its extraction of exceptionally rich natural resources with sufficient investments to ensure long-term economic growth.
13 March 2008
In West Africa, democracy on the rise
While much of East Africa is bogged down in violent political conflicts, several countries in West Africa are well on their way to establishing successful democracies. Ghana and Benin have held multiple free, peaceful elections, and the political future also looks hopeful in such countries as Liberia, Cote d’Ivoire and Sierra Leone, where civil wars have ended in recent years. The Washington Post (3/13)
February 15, 2008
In Africa, Bush aid viewed warmly
U.S. President George W. Bush’s upcoming visit to Africa will be heavily colored by the overwhelmingly positive feelings many Africans have for his administration’s multi-billion dollar aid policies. U.S. aid to the continent has tripled under Bush, with his administration’s policies focused mainly on economic development, HIV/AIDS, malaria and debt forgiveness. Read more about Bush’s six-day Africa trip, which starts Saturday, in this USA TODAY article also The Miami Herald/Associated Press (2/15) , The Economist (2/14)
January 30, 2008
(The Economist) African economies suffer from a lack of liberalisation
Claims by some donor groups and international lenders notwithstanding, African countries have made negligible progress liberalising their economies in recent years. To close the gap with high- and middle-income countries, they must do more.
Liberalisation of African economies in recent years has been overstated, according to the 2008 Freedom of the World report published by a US-based think-tank, the Heritage Foundation, and the Wall Street Journal. While the average economic freedom index improved some 5.7% between its launch in 1996 and 2004—the peak year for Africa—little progress has been apparent in the past four years, and the 2008 figure is almost identical to that of 2001.
Freedom matters, the Heritage Foundation says, because there is a very strong correlation between the level of economic freedom and the prosperity of the people. The higher the freedom score, the lower the rate of unemployment, meaning that the more repressed the economy, the more impoverished its inhabitants. Equally, inflation rates tend to rise as economic freedom falls.
For the most part, although not without exception, the Heritage Foundation’s correlation between incomes per head and economic freedom holds good. Seven of the ten economically most free African economies (Mauritius, Botswana, South Africa, Namibia, Tunisia, Swaziland and Cape Verde) are, in fact, middle-income states. Uganda, Madagascar and Kenya, however, are very low-income countries.
Rich resources impede progress
This underscores that fact that the correlation between economic freedom and income per head tends to break down in resource-rich states. Although there are again exceptions–notably Botswana, and to a lesser extent South Africa and Namibia (since their economies and exports do not depend heavily on a single industry like oil and gas in Angola, Nigeria, Algeria, Equatorial Guinea, Congo or Chad)–almost all of Africa’s resource-rich economies are repressed or mostly unfree.
The reasons for this are simple: countries with plentiful oil, platinum or copper reserves see no need to free up their economies to attract foreign investors. Similarly, they don’t need foreign aid and certainly do not want foreign experts telling them what to do. But resource-poor countries like Uganda, Madagascar and Kenya know that they have to create an investment- and business-friendly environment to boost economic performance.
Bleak outlook
However, the report is gloomy about overall Sub-Saharan prospects, noting that the region ranks last in eight of the ten economic freedoms. Ironically, the single freedom for which the region scores higher than the world average—size of government—is more a reflection of weakness than strength. Governments are smaller in Africa not because politicians want it that way, but because governments lack the capacity to provide services.