AFRICA – In the 16-year period analyzed in the report “Dynamics of Development in Africa – Growth, Employment and Inequality 2018”, Angola recorded a 40% average investment as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
This average figure, obtained during the presidency of Jose Eduardo dos Santos, was about 3 percentage points higher than that of Lesotho, while Zambia was close to 37% and Botswana was just over 32%.
Together with Zimbabwe and Sudan, Angola attracted the largest number of direct investment projects in China among the 54 African countries.
Mozambique has been very close to the 30% average foreign investment from 2000 to 2016 as a percentage of GDP in southern Africa, a sub-region divided by the AU and still comprising South Africa, Malawi, Namibia, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe.
In the 16-year period, direct foreign investment represented USD 21.2 billion (EUR 18.5 billion) in 2016, reflecting the growth of USD 6.9 billion (EUR 6.9 billion) over 2009.
The AU and OECD study conducted back in 2018 for the first time, found that 10 countries in southern Africa faced “premature de-industrialization” from 2000 to 2016.
The process of eliminating or reducing industrial capacity or activity, in particular, manufacturing, fell from 18.2% as a percentage of GDP in 2000 to 12.6% in 2016 in southern Africa.
The report, which analyzes development policies on the continent, sees South Africa as the most open region for trade on the continent, rising from 48 percent of GDP from the beginning of the 1990s to 65 percent in 2016, an average growth of 3% per year, while the whole continent grew 4.2%.
In the southern region of the African continent, GDP grew by 5.2% between 2000 and 2008, but slowed to 2.6% between 2009 and 2016, “heavily affected by price and investment volatility” in the oil extraction sector.
From 1990 to last year, per capita GDP in the 10 South African countries doubled, with a very significant increase from 2000.
In 1990, per capita GDP stood at $ 3,491 million, while in 2000 it was $ 3,910 million, closing 2018 at $ 7,067 million ($ 6,100 million) of euros.
The study “Dynamics of Development in Africa – Growth, Employment and Inequality 2018″ was first developed to address the relationship between growth, employment, and inequality in Africa and the implications in strategic frameworks.
