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What explains the slow growth rates experienced in Africa since the 1970s? This paper pursues two cross country approaches in to attempting to provide case study teams with a comparative context for the analysis of individual-country growth experience in Sub-Saharan Africa:

• The first is based on differences in the accumulation of productive factors, for slow growth is explained by relatively slow accumulation of capital, low productivity growth, and pressures from high population growth rates
• The second is based on the differences in the policy stances influential to growth, the main hypothesis being that the policy environment and weaknesses in governance combine to create a capital-hostile environment, limiting accumulation and undermining productivity growth by diverting investible resources to unproductive uses

The paper then reviews African growth experiences in light of that in other developing economies and against the benchmarks of fast growing developing economies.

Conclusions include:

• slow accumulation of capital, slow productivity growth, and a delayed demographic transition each contribute importantly to Africa’s relative performance
• policy, institutions, and political stability covary with growth in ways consistent with theory
• case study teams are encouraged to explore these linkages in individual countries, mindful of the methodological caveats raised in the paper

A companion document presents country-level evidence and describes a pair of data spreadsheets to be transmitted to country teams.

Summary originally provided by GDNet, an Eldis content partner

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