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Friday, January 14, 2011

Recovered From Crisis?

The World Bank is saying that the economies of most developing countries, including African countries, have recovered from "the crisis." It is not clear which crisis the World Bank is talking about but it appears that the crisis to which the World Bank is referring is the financial crisis that struck the world in 2008. It is good to know that developing countries have recovered from this crisis. However, it must not be forgotten that before the 2008 financial crisis, many African countries had been in economic crisis for at least thirty years. This means that whatever recovery they have made from the 2008 crisis, they have merely returned to the level of crisis they experienced before 2008. While it is good that sub-Saharan Africa saw over 4% growth in 2010 while north Africa made over 3%, more than twice those levels of growth will be needed if the economies of these countries expect to move past crisis mode. As far as Africa is concerned, the World Bank report has to be read from the perspective of an economic crisis that began long before 2008.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I think it will be interesting to see what what the World Bank has to say about the economic progress of Africa in a few years. How they will access the growth of Africa now that they are back to where they were before the crisis in 2008. I wonder if the growth will seem as significant since since their recovery. AE