Africa 2050: Realizing the Continent's Full Potential

Africa is at a critical inflection point. After decades of disappointing performance a combination of sound macro policies and a commodity price bonanza has led to a dramatic and long overdue surge in African growth rates and concomitant improvement in social indicators. This impressive performance has now created its own challenge for African leadership-the heightened aspirations of their own people and the expectation of the world at large. And responding to this challenge will definitely require more than staying the course-more of the same will not work. It will require bold and tenacious pursuit of multifaceted policies and initiatives that will call for intellectual integrity and single?minded determination combined with political courage at home and statesmanship abroad. It is in this context that the experience of the other emerging markets economies may provide pointers as African leaders grapple with the complex multidimensional issues of not just maintaining but accelerating economic growth, prosperity and well?being of their populace. To set the stage for defining the opportunities and the promise that can lie ahead, this report sets out alternative scenarios of what the outcomes could be but not predictions of what they will be. This study also outlines a framework and action agenda that can deliver Africa's promise. Contributors to this volume - Mahmood Ayub is a Senior Associate with Centennial International Group in Washington, DC.; Anupam Basu is a Senior Associate with Centennial Group International; James Bond is an independent financial advisor specializing in energy and infrastructure in emerging economies; Fantu Cheru is a Distinguished Research Associate at the North-South Institute (Ottawa, Canada), Senior Research Fellow at the Center for African Studies at Leiden University (The Netherlands), and Emeritus Professor of African and Development Studies at American University in Washington, DC.; David DeGroot is a Research Scholar in the New York University Urbanization Project and currently leads, under the direction of Solly Angel, the Urban Expansion Project in Ethiopia; Jose Fajgenbaum is the Director of Centennial Group, Latin America; Birger Fredriksen is a consultant on education policies in developing countries; Jean-Pierre Guengant holds a PhD in development economics and a master's degree in demography; Harpaul Alberto Kohli is the Manager of Information Analytics at Centennial Group International and the Emerging Markets Forum, where he is responsible for all modeling, statistics, databases, and technology management; Claudio M. Loser is CEO and President of Centennial Latin America and is Advisor for the Emerging Markets Forum. Loser is also a Senior Fellow at the Inter-American Dialogue; John May, a specialist in population policies and programs, is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Population Reference Bureau (PRB); John Murray McIntire is currently Deputy Director General for Integrated Sciences at the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi; Serge Michailof is currently an Associate Researcher at the Institut de Relations Internationale et Strategique (IRIS) in Paris; Praful Patel holds an MA (urban settlements) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a former Vice President of The World Bank and currently with Centennial Group International serving as their Vice President for Africa; Jeffrey Racki has worked in both the private and public sectors in technical and management positions dealing with housing, urban development, local government, and service delivery; Graham Stegmann is currently an independent consultant on international development; Tomonori Sudo is a Senior Research Fellow at the JICA Research Institute currently conducting research on environment and climate change issues. He is also a member of the OECD/DAC Environment and Development Cooperation Network.