The precarious fate of the African Century

A short decade from now, Africa will have the youngest workforce in an aging world and the potential to become a spectacular economic success story. Or it could become home to the overwhelming majority of the world’s poor.

“By 2030 or so, we'll probably need to create about 11 million jobs a year,” says Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, one of the world's leading development economists. “That’s a tall order.”

But not an impossible one, says Okonjo-Iweala, a former managing director of the World Bank and Finance Minister of Nigeria. While the window for Africa to become a job-creating manufacturing powerhouse like the so-called “Asian Tiger” countries, she says there is still the potential that “smokestack-less” industries such as services and technology that are booming in countries like Rwanda could help create an economic African Lion.

Okonjo-Iweala says African policymakers must learn the lessons of the continent’s most recent boom in order to ensure a prosperous future. For the first 15 years of the 21st century, African economies as a group grew annually by four to six percent, at times outpacing the average global growth rate. African policymakers helped through better macroeconomic management of things like exchange rates, inflation, and negotiating down the continents huge debt burden.

But falling commodity prices over the past several years expose a weakness in that success, stalling growth, and now African policymakers must push further to support entrepreneurs by investing in infrastructure and education and cutting the bureaucratic red tape that can stifle innovation.

Okonjo-Iweala spoke with PolicyCast host Thoko Moyo after a recent visit to Harvard Kennedy School to deliver the Robert S. McNamara Lecture on War and Peace.

For more on this topic, check out Okonjo-Iweala’s lecture, which sponsored by the Institute of Politics and titled “The Changing Face of Povery: Can Africa Surprise the World?”