Formula for Africa's rapid growth: after almost five decades of independence, how is Africa faring in terms of economics? Is the continent improving, staying still or regressing? How can it meet the Millennium Development Goals? Editor Anver Versi ponders the issue.

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Africa's Economic Performance

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Formula for Africa's rapid growth: after almost five decades of independence, how is Africa faring in terms of economics? Is the continent improving, staying still or regressing? How can it meet the Millennium Development Goals? Editor Anver Versi ponders the issue.

For the last three years, the African Development Bank (ADB) has published an invaluable, comparative analysis of Africa's economic performance. The aim of the document--African Economic Outlook (AEO)--is to assess annual economic changes on the continent in order to gauge whether the continent is progressing or regressing.

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How does one measure change? What do 'facts and figures' tell us? The authors of the ADB report appear to have kept the adage 'there are lies, damned lies and statistics' firmly in mind in the preparation of their report. Statistics, as we know, can not only hide the truth, they can even mislead.

But intelligent analysis, applied to appropriate statistics, as this document does, can paint a fairly accurate picture of the real state of affairs.

It is also highly commendable that, at long last, an African organisation--the African Development Bank--dealing with real African issues on African soil, has taken the responsibility of translating facts and figures into an analytical narrative. Hitherto, this task was the preserve of international institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF.

While the IMF, the World Bank and other UN reports are exhaustive (some say exhausting!), the agenda they address is not always compatible with Africa's needs. The African Economic Outlook (AEO) on the other hand, is firmly wedded to African aspirations. Thus, while there is little discrepancy in terms of facts and figures between the two sources, the AEO's translation of statistics is much closer to...

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