Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) should not be defined by the structural parameters and opportunities of low-income countries, given that it also comprises a number of higher-income countries. This book finds that SSA is tightly constrained in its growth, employment and poverty outcomes. Rather than taking this as a conceptual downside, these constraints to growth and development have to be recognised and overcome-not just by a few countries able to escape them more easily, but by all countries in SSA, such that no country is left behind. The book observes a weakness in the quantum of growth in SSA. It relates this to a growth path based more on extractives than manufactured goods. While SSA is endowed with extractives, global demand for these is very volatile. These boom-bust cycles in export demand come to affect not just the export sector in SSA as a resource curse, but also the production of output of the entire economy. The book captures this through the working out of equilibrium in four major markets: the tradeables market, the domestic goods market, the labour market, and the money market.

Moazam Mahmood is Professor in Economics at the Lahore School of Economics (Pakistan) and Visiting Professor at the Capital University of Economics and Business in Beijing (China).

Auteur

Moazam Mahmood is Professor in Economics at the Lahore School of Economics (Pakistan) and Visiting Professor at the Capital University of Economics and Business in Beijing (China).

Texte du rabat

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is in danger of being significantly left behind other regions of the world economically. Growth in SSA has been much weaker and more volatile than in other regions in the last two decades. The region contains most of the world's least developed countries: they have the lowest per capita incomes, they are structurally less developed, they are aid- (and often) food-dependent, and have the largest and deepest pockets of poverty left in the world. Meanwhile, in other developing regions of the world, such as Latin America and Asia, there has been much more progress on all these important indicators of growth and welfare. SSA alone failed to meet the challenge of halving poverty to meet its Millennium Development Goals for 2015, and is in now serious danger of not meeting its Sustainable Development Goals to eliminate poverty by 2030.

This Palgrave Pivot provides a narrative for SSA that brings together growth, jobs and poverty reduction.

Contenu

The Narrative.- 2. The Quantum of Growth.- 3. Drivers of Growth in Sub Saharan Africa.- 4. Sectoral Growth in Sub Saharan Africa.- 5. Deindustrialisation in Sub Saharan Africa Explains Key Vulnerabilities in Growth and Productivity.- 6. The Labour Market in Sub Saharan Africa.- 7. Poverty, Jobs and Growth: The Primary Policy Agenda for SSA.- 8. A Policy Agenda for the way forward in Poverty, Jobs and Growth in Sub Saharan Africa.