By Chrystia Freeland
NEW YORK Oct 18 (Reuters) – If you are looking for some
good cheer in a pretty gloomy world, consider the growing
consensus among some of the world’s smartest money that the next
big emerging market may be Africa.
Above all, that is great news for Africans: As we have seen
across so much of Asia, economic growth has accomplished what
decades of well-meaning development efforts failed to do,
lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty. If that happens in
Africa, the world will be transformed.
This case for Africa as the world’s new economic tiger is
made forcefully in “The Fastest Billion: The Story Behind
Africa’s Economic Revolution,” a data-packed collection of
essays to be published at the end of this month and brought
together under the aegis of Renaissance Capital, an investment
firm with Russian roots and global ambitions.
The consensus view among many students of the global economy
is that investment decisions are about choosing, in the words of
Mohamed A. El-Erian, chief executive of the fund manager Pimco,
“the cleanest dirty shirt”: The United States faces a fiscal
cliff and political gridlock, Europe is tenuously poised between
years of painfully slow growth and outright collapse, and even
go-go China is slowing.
By contrast, in the view of Stephen Jennings, the
Renaissance chief executive, Africa is on a tear. “It is the
only region in the world where growth is accelerating,” he said
by phone from Moscow. “If you strip out South Africa, the rest
of the region is actually growing very, very quickly.”
Jennings says he believes Africa is following the path to
economic development that has been trod in recent decades by
countries like Brazil, China and India – only in Africa the
transformation is happening even faster.
“The chances are this will be like Asia and this will go on
for the next 30 years,” Jennings said. “It is helpful to
remember where Asia was in the early 1970s. Then, most of the
wars were in Asia, the lowest GDP and life expectancy were in
Asia. People thought that was Asia’s lot.”
Continued…
