IS THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD ECONOMIES IN AFRICA’S HANDS?

Africa is experiencing its longest income boom for 30 years, with GDP growth rates averaging about 50% annually. According to the IMF the world’s fastest growing economies will be in Africa. IMF also forecast that seven of the world’s ten fasten growing economies will be in Africa, with Ethiopia, Mozambique, Tanzania, Congo, Ghana, Zambia and Nigeria topping the list. Zambia is one of the continent’s promising economies growing at 7.6% in 2010 and 6.6% in 2011. Another exemplary example is Kenya were mobile phone bank transfers have revolutionised rural access to cash just two years after the mobile banking system M-Pesa was introduced in 2007, 40% of the Kenyan adult population had become customers. If the middle class is an integral sign of economic growth then the future economic growth for Africa is sanguine, according to an African Development Bank report the projections by 2030 for much of the continent is that it will have a middle class majority and that consumer spending will soar from $680 billion to $2.2 trillion. Already Uganda has shifted from having one university to 30 in over two decades. According to Netherlands – African Business Council (NABC) four reasons stand out as to why Africa’s, Africa is now booming and has considerable discretionary spending power, Africa is poised to have the largest labour force in the world, African workers are better educated than before and Africa can easily become the world’s breadbasket with 60% of the world’s unused cropland. Over the next 40 years, Africa’s population is set to double from one billion to two billion, this may as well enrich the different income portfolios. Africa should still deal with the niggling issue of human rights and slay the four demons of poverty, bad leadership, health and ignorance (education) but the future still looks bright.