Africa: Opportunities and Challenges

Africa Emerging:

            The Hopeless Content is fast becoming a Formidable Player on the World Stage.

Stats:

• Between 2000 and 2008, Africa’s annual GDP grew by 5.3 percent compared with 4 percent globally.
• During this period, Africa’s equity markets have outperformed global indexes. This is according to a 2010 report by the Boston Consulting Group.
• In 2009, when established economies were shrinking, Africa’s was expanding.
• And since 1998, revenues of the continent’s 500 largest companies, excluding banks, have grown at an average of 8.3 percent a year. Despite poverty, political unrest and the AIDS pandemic, there are signs that Africa’s growth is sustainable.
• The continent’s inflation rate has declined from 22 percent in the 1990s to just 8 percent since 2000, and foreign direct investment has been pouring in, rising from $10 billion in 2000 to $88 billion in 2008.

Read Complete article and report here.

Coiled from Chief Executive September/October 2010