The World Economic Forum on Africa is set to begin two weeks from tomorrow in Cape Town, South Africa.  Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is Managing Director for the World Bank, and will co-chair the forum.  In looking ahead to the forum, she says the biggest challenge facing African leaders during the economic crisis is to "maintain the reform momentum that they had before the crisis":

Paul Collier writes in The Guardian that what African leaders need to do now is prepare better for the next "commodity boom."  Collier writes that the eruption of the global economic crisis brought an end to the continent's second commodity boom in forty years, and once again most leaders failed to take advantage of their natural resource income to build sustainable economies.  So Collier calls on leaders to take the next step and prepare for the end of the crisis, when natural resources may once again provide opportunity:

Transforming assets beneath the ground into sustained prosperity for ordinary citizens requires integrity and astuteness. Without integrity the assets get looted, and without astuteness they get squandered. Neither is easy to achieve, but integrity is at least easy to understand. TheExtractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) is an international standard to which governments can make a commitment. Introduced in 2003, it was the right place to start in the struggle to break with the past. But it would be the wrong place to stop: integrity is not enough.

Collier goes on to praise the Natural Resource Charter, which a group of economists, political scientists, and lawyers have put together.  We will watch in two weeks to see whether this is part of the "reform momentum" that Okonjo-Iweala referenced.  

Read Preparing for Africa's Boom here.