“In 2025, the IMF says, nine of the world’s 20 fastest-growing economies will be in Africa. Most of these are non-resource-intensive states. Rwanda, Ethiopia, Ivory Coast and Tanzania, for example, are projected to grow by at least 6%. For all the faults of their politicians, it probably helps that, in the absence of a golden (or oily) goose, they have had to learn to find other sources of growth.

This is good news for sub-Saharan Africa. The region faces profound challenges: tight budgets caused by low growth and high debts mean there is little room to invest in the future. Financing for schools, infrastructure and adapting to climate change is hard to raise at home or internationally. A lack of formal jobs for the millions of people entering the labour market every year worries policymakers. Many observers are sceptical that the region can ever catch up with the rest of the world. So if some African states can close the gap they can be exemplars.

The bad news is that the economies of these outliers are not big enough to power the continent, at least not yet. South Africa, Nigeria and Angola alone make up almost 40% of sub-Saharan Africa’s gdp. It is time that these giants got their act together—and started to learn from their nimbler peers.”

From The Economist.