Thursday, January 26, 2012
Africa's Hopeful Economies
This article starts by explaining a new trend of increasing numbers of self made African billionaires. Africa suffers from gross inequalities, but there is an up and coming middle class. The Standard Bank (a bank that operates throughout the continent of Africa) estimates that 60m African household have an annual income greater than $3,000 at market exchange rates; by 2015 this number is expected to reach 100,000m. This "new middle class" can partially be attributed to Africa's increase in international trade, decreased inflation and higher productivity over the past few years. The article relates Africa to China 30 years ago when it took off as an international super power. Africa and China appear to have have many similarities besides economic growth. To start Africa's population is estimated to double from 1 billion people to 2 billion in the next 40 years. Also demographically, the mean age of Africans is 20. As this generation moves into the working class age, Africa's productivity will certainly increase. These similarities to an up and coming China should not be ignored but factors such as corruption, war, and disease continue to cripple the continent. Also looking at statistics for "Africa" can be dangerous because each of Africa's 54 countries provide severely different economic and social challenges that need individual economic policies. Until these factors can be dealt with, this naturally rich continent will continue to be home to a mainly poor population.http://www.economist.com/node/21541008
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5 comments:
It will be interesting to see what will become of Africa. It makes sense that the middle class will be expanding, since the population is expected to double. Yet the middle class section will not necessarily be doubling. My concern for the continent of Africa is that the scarce resources will continue to be spread even thinner. The governments are not doing a very good job at addressing the roots of the economic crisis that is occurring in many African countries.
I always feel like education will be the base of development in Africa. Africa has advantages in some sectors such tourism and natural resources. But without proper labor force, they just cannot make use of hthem.
The speedy growing of population is a result of early marriage too. Education would help enhance women status and lower population growth.
I'd definitely agree that there need to be increases in educational opportunities, but I'm also concerned about the population that is so young. Due to the AIDS epidemic there is essentially a missing generation of parents which means that older siblings have to act as caretakers and can't as easily obtain some of the education that exists. Education definitely needs to expand, but without addressing some of the health problems including malaria, HIV, TB and others, young people won't be able to access these resources.
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