Leapfrogging : The Key to Africa's Development?
Despite sustained economic growth over the past two decades, Sub-Saharan Africa faces massive challenges and significant gaps in many development outcomes. Although poverty has been declining, a recent report estimates that over two-fifths of the A...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2017
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/121581505973379739/Leapfrogging-the-key-to-Africas-development-from-constraints-to-investment-opportunities http://hdl.handle.net/10986/28440 |
| Summary: | Despite sustained economic growth over
the past two decades, Sub-Saharan Africa faces massive
challenges and significant gaps in many development
outcomes. Although poverty has been declining, a recent
report estimates that over two-fifths of the African
population was poor in 2012. Nearly two-thirds of Africans
do not have electricity. Less than one quarter of African
enterprises have loans or lines of credit; the corresponding
share among firms in non-African developing countries is
almost half. The use of formal financial services is
concentrated among the richest 20 percent of the population.
Most African countries have made significant gains in access
to education, but learning remains weak. The agriculture
sector, which employs a large share of the labor force,
exhibits low productivity. Technological change and levels,
which are the drivers of productivity, are much lower
compared to other parts of the world. Even simple
productivity-enhancing factors like the use of fertilizers
has remained flat for decades. Africa’s large
infrastructure, technology, and policy gaps require
disruptive solutions and thinking outside of the box. Yet,
development policies have often been primarily programmatic
and mostly incremental. This book argues that it is time to
go back to basics of development, think big, and foster the
environment for more innovation and technology adoption, to
provide the chance for Africa to experience major positive
transformations. This is not a new idea; to the contrary, it
is what economic theory and history teach. While it has
become customary in the development practice to highlight
and quantify constraints to investing in Africa, this book
argues that those constraints must be and transformed into
investment opportunities. Several factors, such as skills,
service delivery, access to finance, energy, to name the
few, are often pointed out as constraints to investment.
Treating those constraints as investment opportunities,
attracting the private sector, both domestic and foreign,
and creating a conducive environment for technological
diffusion is precisely how Africa will harness innovation
toward its prosperity. |
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