The meaning of African growth
I saw an article the other day headlined “ Why saying ‘ seven of the ten fastest growing economies are in Africa ‘ carries no real meaning” [1] (By Morten Jerven writing on africanarguments.org). Not one to be put off by such one eyed perspectives – I thought I should read it. Always get the ‘other ‘ perspective is what I believe and advocate, and so I did. What followed was a clinical analysis of GDP’s, growth rates, inflation rates and the like, indicators, so oft leant upon by economists to underpin their arguments. Basically a dismissing of the current African economic turnaround as being statistically misleading and so on. But all was not bad – there was a concession at the end that ‘ the evidence does not yet readily provide us with an answer ’. Had it been included in the title as a rider, perhaps one would have read the article with a little less disregard for the approach of the author ( an associate professor at the Simon Fraser University for Inter