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Africa commended on war on poverty
2007-02-28 10:02:44
By Michael Haonga
A number of African countries including Uganda, Tanzania, Senegal, Mozambique, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ghana, and Cape Verde have shown positive prospects of halving poverty by the year 2015, the World bank revealed yesterday.
Launching the Africa Development Indicators 2006 (ADI 2006) in Dar es Salaam yesterday, the World Bank said that the countries had, `...lifted significant percentages of their citizens above the poverty line and might well be on course to meeting the income poverty Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target.`
Launching the ADI 2006, a World Bank official from the bank's headquarters in Washington Dc, Jorge Saba Arbache, a Brazilian Professor said the report depicts a diverse continent with several countries making remarkable progress, some stagnating and others lagging behind.
`The full spectrum of achievers and laggards stretches from Zimbabwe, which recorded a negative growth rate of 2.4 per cent, the only country with a negative growth rate in 2004 on the continent, to Equatorial Guinea, which recorded a 20.9 per cent growth rate.` he said.
`While economic outcomes are increasingly diverse, Africa has made near uniform progress in social outcomes, notably education and health,` Professor Arbache quoted John Page, the World Bank's Chief economist for the Africa region, adding that Africa's per capita income was now increasing in tandem with other developing countries.
The ADI 2006 was referred to also confirm the facts that 16 African countries have sustained annual GDP growth rates in excess of 4.5 percent since the mid -1990s; inflation on the continent being down to historic lows; most exchange rate distortions being eliminated and fiscal deficits dropping down.
It further notes that the continent weathered higher oil prices better than previous shocks and its real GDP grew by 5.1 percent in 2004.
As for productivity in Africa's best performing firms, it was noted that it was on par with competitors in Asia (India and Vietnam).
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