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  • South Africa's Ambassador to the US on the Economic Growth and Responsibility of South Africa

    The South African economy has performed relatively well in the aftermath of the Global Economic Crisis. Ebrahim Rasool , South Africa's ambassador to the United States, tells Knowledge@Wharton 's Steve Sherretta that the country's "robust" banking system deserves much of the credit for the economic growth. Rasool also discussed the somewhat unique position South Africa applies as a vital bridge for global business. South Africa links the developing nations of Sub-Saharan Africa with Europe and the West. It also, as Rasool discusses, carries a great deal of responsibility for the economic good of an entire continent.

  • Kenya Ambassador Touts Potential of Markets in Africa

    Kenya's Ambassador to the US, Elkanah Odembo , believes American businesses are overlooking a potentially vast market in Africa. He predicts that there will be 1 billion consumers across the continent, and that US firms should be seeking to engage with the growing middle class in African nations as Chinese companies have. Here is Odenbo speaking about business opportunities in Kenya and other African economies at the Wharton School :

  • World Economic Forum on Africa; 'Maintaining Reform Momentum'

    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. The Extractive 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 .

  • Globalization and African Economies

    Critics who argue globalization does not lift all boats, often point to the African continent for examples of economies left behind…or worse. In this interview, Paul Collier , director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies and professor of economics at Oxford, discusses the factors—internal and external—that have prevented nations in Africa from economic growth. Collier says the treatment of Africa as one entity is a common mistake. He divides the continent up into three large groups—the nations with resources; the nations without resources but on a coast; and the landlocked nations without resources. The coastal nations would seem poised to first take advantage of globalization, and Mauritius serves as THE example of an African country that built itself up in the global economy. Other nations have not been able to copy the success (Madagascar was close, but recent political strife blocked progress). The big opportunity for African nations to break into global markets, Collier says, was back in the 1980s. Now, after the growth of China in the manufacturing sector, and India in the service sector, developing nations are not facing a level playing field. So trade pacts with Europe and the US are vital at this point. As are the contributions of NGOs—the work of which Collier praises as one of the ways globalization has aided struggling African economies.