Mkandawire, Thandika. "Can Africa Turn from Recovery to Development?". Current History, Vol.113, No.763 (2014): 171-177.

Mkandawire, Thandika. "Can Africa Turn from Recovery to Development?". Current History, Vol.113, No.763 (2014): 171-177.

• The immense pessimism surrounding Africa during the 1980s and 1990s damaged not only the continent's self-esteem, but also frightened away potential investors due to a portrayal of the region as economically unstable. In the 2000s, this has been replaced by a ebullient optimism about Africa's future as a rising economic star (171).
• This pessimism surrounding Africa during the 1980s and 1990s was reflective of a stagnation or fall in GDP during that period. These were 'lost decades' caused partially by the austere policies of the World Bank and IMF, and only recently did Africa recover to 1970s levels of prosperity (171).
• International economic institutions, like the IMF and World Bank, have often claimed credit for the economic success of Africa in the 21st Century, claiming that their policies are finally bearing fruit. This is untrue and disingenuous, as they did not predict that the policies would take more than 5 years to demonstrate effects, and since they had previously declared their policies to be largely failures, although blame was usually deflected onto Africa (172-173).
• The mistaken policies of these international financial organizations have caused immense hardship in Africa. The privatization campaign downsized government in all forms, leaving Africa with shoddy infrastructure, a small, overworked, and demoralized civil service, and low levels of tertiary education (174).
• Programs to limit state roles in economic activity, decried as corrupt, strengthened protective branches of government at the cost of growth-producing branches, leaving economic growth under the control of local cliques or poorly informed and uncoordinated donors (174).
• The African economic recovery since the late 1990s was largely driven by an increase in export markets as African countries increasingly exported to ascendant Asian powers instead of slow-growing European states (173).
• The dependence of African growth on high levels of demand in Asian economies casts doubt on the long-term sustainability of current growth trends, as African exports have primarily benefited from higher process rather than increased production, export diversification, or progress up the value chain (173).
• Growth was also driven by increase foreign direct investment in mining and telecommunications, especially the later, which accounted for over half of all investment in the decade following Y2K. The increased investment has been enabled by increased public spending, allowing for the infrastructure which attracts other investors (173-174).
• Investment prior to the 1990s had been almost entirely from the West and conditional on adherence to certain aspects of the Washington Consensus. New investors in India, and esp. China, have no such conditions for investment (174).
• Africa has experienced two great policies failures that will continue to have a negative effect on its economic state: a lack of industrialization and a low rate of agricultural productivity. African exports are still commodities low down on the value chain and wealth is usually consumed instead of reinvested in industry. Poor rural infrastructure has also prevented any agricultural revolution in Africa (176).
• African development has been hobbled by myth propagated by Western donors regarding uniform strategies in Africa, and preventing African governments from enacting specialized and innovative solutions based on local conditions. Attempts to apply the Asian model or resist its application also suffer from lack of informed opinions (176-177).