Trade expert questions leadership drive to grow Africa

The old pessimistic paradigm of Africa's development is outdated, but some valid elements cannot be dismissed if economic growth is to be pursued on the continent, says South African leading trade expert.

According to Peter Draper, Senior Research Associate at the South African Institute of International Affairs, political leaders of nation-states are not building the governance consensus needed for development.

“There is the absence of a modernizing vision” in what has become known as the 'Neo-Patrimonial Politics', where “leaders assume power for the purpose of assuming power”, he told a group of African journalists attending a Thomson Reuters Foundation workshop in South Africa.

Chronic macroeconomic crisis, debt, inflation, commodity dependence and poverty have characterized the sub-Saharan African economic paradigm.

However, recent global economic and development reports are pointing positive for the continent.

A 2010 report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), for instance, projected that seven out of the top ten global growth stories in the next five years will be in Africa.

Washington-based independent research body, the Center for Global Development, has also identified 17 emerging African countries with long-term growth prospects, including Ghana.

Indicators for growth, according to the organization, include entrenched democracy and accountability, new leadership, sustained economic reforms, debt reduction and improved donor relations and new technologies to leapfrog development.

Yet, global economic analyst, Paul Collier, has postulated four traps that African countries need to disentangle to develop – including conflict, bad governance, landlocked with bad neighbors and resources curse.

Peter Draper shares this view. But he is optimistic that these traps can be transcended for growth and development. “Sub-Saharan Africa is trapped so the West needs to come to the rescue. So it leads to logically external subventions and interventions to split the traps”.

He however believes that “because state formation in Europe took a particular form, a different lens is required in any drive to develop Africa”, emphasizing the need for diversification of African economies.

The challenge, he identified is with African policy-makers “who think they should be in control”.

“Let's get the business environment right, let's get the infrastructure right, let's develop the ports, let's remove the bottlenecks that are holding the economy back and if you can do that then the market would take care of the rest”, noted The international trade expert.

Kofi Adu Domfeh reporting from Joburg-South Africa