AFDB: Africa economic growth stagnates in 2011

The recent political event in North Africa, high food prices and oil prices are likely to slow the economic continent’s growth to 3.7 percent in 2011 while the political instability led the Gross Domestic Product stagnation to 0.7 percent in 2011 from 4.7 percent in 2010. These were identified by the chief economist of African Development Bank (AfDB), Professor Mthuli Ncube during the launching of 10th edition of African Economic Outlook (AEO) at the Bank of Tanzania on Monday. “The Inflation, political instabilities and infrastructure deficit remain the major challenges in economic growth in African countries, Africa is grown and the country which faced the social unrest are the ones which leads to poor performance in economic growth” he add Professor Ncube analysed that 20 countries conducted elections in 2011, meanwhile in July 2011 Sudan become the two country as well as there were constitutional change in other countries. “The slowest countries in economic growth includes Tunisia, Libya and Madagascar and the fastest growth African countries in 2011 includes Tanzania were grew for 6.9 percent, Ghana grew for 12 percent, Ethiophia 10 percent and DRC 8.4 percent” he explain. In additional the governor of Bank of Tanzania Proffesor Benno Ndulu adds that increased of poverty is another challenge that hinder economic growth in African Continent. “Agricultural and Small Medium enterprises (SMEs) plays the major role and cannot be avoided for changing life through increased in productions,” said Professor Ndulu. In contributing on that the executive director of Research on Poverty Alleviation (REPOA), professor Samwel Wangwe encourage much effort must be addressed on SMEs and agricultural because he identify that these sector has not been given much effort, He add that unemployment and lower productivity as well as technological role being the other challenges were he said that  ICT plays a big role in improving economics in any country. “There are some people who are not employed but their busy doing some small business which is lower in productivity” Wangwe said. On wind up the discussion, The director of research in Tanzania Investment Center Dr John Kyaruzi insist on creating good environment to investors especially in Foreign direct investment in Africa  and encourage on complementarily of the merging partners (eps)because cooperation is the good opportunities on learning others experiences. The African economic outlook report show the disparities in economic performance in 2011 were  North Africa the economic grew to 0.7 percent, West Africa by 5.0 percent, Centre Africa for 5.3 percent, south Africa is 4.5 percent and East Africa to 6.7 percent  but will expecting to recover 2012.