One of Africa's most influential economists says that most analysts get Africa totally wrong — and that the economic picture is much better than we think.
A new book by a leading economist challenges current negative perceptions about the continent.
The book is organised around a couple of challenges that I think are the most significant, from how you change politics to the relationship with China. A lot of the material was collected while I was in charge of Uneca. The absence of quality data is undermining some good news that we are not aware of because data is not available. I think gross domestic product and all the usual indicators are underestimated in Africa, and because they are underestimated they provoke the wrong diagnosis and the wrong policy recommendations. If you go through the data, you discover that Africa has lots more fiscal opportunity than people imagine.
You can say that financial flows in Africa are not what you think, because the largest investor in India is an African country. Someone in the know will say: “Yes, but it’s Mauritius, so it doesn’t really count.” If it were Jersey [a British tax haven], which operates exactly like Mauritius, no one will discount that.
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