Success Stories from "Emerging Africa"

Steven Radelet

Journal of Democracy, Volume 21, Number 4, October 2010, pp. 87-101 (Article)

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press

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success stories from

“emerging africa”
Steven Radelet

Steven Radelet was senior fellow at the Center for Global Development
in Washington, D.C., from 2002 until early 2010. This essay is based
on his book Emerging Africa: How 17 Countries Are Leading the Way
(Center for Global Development, 2010).

There is good news out of Africa, or at least a surprisingly large part

of Africa that has quietly been on the move toward stronger economies
and more honest, more effective, and more democratic governments for
fifteen years now.
Since the mid-1990s, seventeen emerging countries in sub-Saharan Af-
rica (SSA) have been leaving behind the conflicts, stagnation, and dicta-
torships of the past and achieving steady economic growth, deepening de-
mocracy, stronger leadership, and falling poverty. Six additional African
countries are showing signs that they may be on the same path—meaning
that fully half the region’s 46 countries are defying the old, negative ste-
reotype of SSA as a region of nothing but disaster and despair.
Consider Ghana, where over the past decade and a half the economy
has grown by a robust 5 percent per year, translating into annual real
growth in income per person of 2.6 percent, well above the global aver-
age of 1.9 percent. As a result, the average Ghanaian’s income has risen
by more than 40 percent during this period. Investment has doubled, and
so have exports. Primary-school enrollment has gone up by a third, life
expectancy has reached 60 years, and the rate of population growth has
dropped from 3.5 percent to 2 percent. The share of Ghanaians who live
below the poverty line has plummeted from 50 percent to less than 30
percent.1 And Ghana has become a vibrant democracy, with competitive
elections, a vocal press, better protection of basic rights, and stronger
governance. Ghana is far from perfect, but it is much stronger politi-
cally, economically, and institutionally than it was just fifteen years ago,
when it was just beginning to emerge from more than a decade under
military rule.

Journal of Democracy Volume 21, Number 4 October 2010

© 2010 National Endowment for Democracy and The Johns Hopkins University Press
88 Journal of Democracy

Or take Mali, which, despite being a landlocked desert country, has

quietly achieved GDP growth of 5.5 percent per year since the mid-
1990s. Infant mortality—a strong proxy for overall well-being in a soci-
ety—is down 25 percent. The primary-school completion rate has dou-
bled, and poverty has fallen by about a third. Mali, too, has established a
thriving multiparty democracy with competitive elections, a free press,
better protection of civil liberties and political rights, less corruption,
and stronger governance.
On the other side of the continent in Tanzania, economic growth has
averaged a robust 5.7 percent since the mid-1990s, leading to an in-
crease in average incomes of 46 percent since 1996. Exports were just
11 percent of GDP in 1991; today they make up more than 20 percent of
a larger GDP. Meanwhile, external debt has been cut from 160 percent
of GDP to just 30 percent. Infant mortality has declined by 25 percent,
and the population-growth rate has dropped from 3.3 percent to 2.4 per-
cent. Tanzania, like the other countries, has shifted toward democratic
governance, with multiple peaceful elections, stronger adherence to po-
litical and civil rights, and stronger governance.
In the island country of Cape Verde, GDP has grown 6 percent per year
since 1993, leading to a welcome 66 percent increase in average income.
Exports have doubled from 10 percent to 20 percent of GDP. In 1990, just
54 percent of children completed primary school; today that figure ap-
proaches 90 percent. The infant-mortality rate has been nearly cut in half,
from 45 to 24 per 1,000 since 1990. Poverty rates have halved from 40
percent to less than 20 percent in just fifteen years. Multiple peaceful and
fair elections have transformed the country into a thriving democracy.
The really good news is that Ghana, Mali, Tanzania, and Cape Verde
are not alone. They are part of a growing and dynamic group of emerging
African countries that are breaking away from the dismal histories of eco-
nomic decline and political decay commonly associated with Africa. They
are defying the usual pessimistic storylines of war, famine, stagnant econo-
mies, deepening poverty, destructive political leadership, and poor gover-
nance. Largely unnoticed by the outside world, these countries are quietly
setting themselves apart from the old norms, with more accountable and
democratic governments, rising incomes, new investment opportunities,
less corruption, improved health and education, and declining poverty.
To be sure, these countries are far from perfect. They face many chal-
lenges, and their continued success is far from certain. The political and
economic turnaround remains fragile.2 And across the emerging states,
poverty remains too widespread, healthcare and schooling too often sub-
standard, corruption too common, and democracy too thinly rooted for
comfort. Even so, however, the signs of progress are real, and they mean
that it is time to think anew about Africa and its emerging countries.
For more than thirty years, it has seemed that just about all the news
out of Africa has been bad. Newspapers report endless civil wars, re-
Steven Radelet 89

peated coups, gross misrule, hunger, disease, and want across the con-
tinent. Academics, pundits, and Western politicians decry the failures
and misdeeds of private investors, foreign-aid bureaucracies, or African
leaders, and paint a picture of a continent trapped in perpetual crisis.
There surely has been much failure, conflict, and stagnation. Deep
challenges continue. But the image of an entire continent mired in fail-
ure and hopelessness is increasingly out of date. As important as are the
tragedies in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Somalia, Sudan,
and Zimbabwe, and as deserving as they are of urgent international at-
tention, too often they are seen—wrongly—as typifying the continent
as a whole.

The Misunderstood Continent

For too long, politicians, the media, academic researchers, and casual
commentators have blended together all the lands south of the Sahara,
treating SSA as a single giant entity. This approach misses or misreads
important events and changes. It combines improvements in one country
with deterioration in another, and concludes that nothing is changing
when the opposite is true. It gives rise to sweeping generalizations about
SSA—home to more than 800 million people and dozens of sovereign
states—that apply to only some of its countries. It misleads the world
about Africa.
Sub-Saharan Africa is rich in diversity. Its countries differ signifi-
cantly from one another with regard to history, economic potential, ge-
ography, culture, and political systems.3 Although countries across the
region share common characteristics, one of the clearest patterns since
the mid-1990s has been significant divergence in economic performance
and political change.
These differences make it increasingly ill-advised to treat SSA as a
single entity. The abysmal political and economic situation in Zimba-
bwe has little in common with the dynamism that we can see in Ghana.
The challenges facing Somalia are completely different from those fac-
ing Mali. And the major issues confronting the DRC bear little resem-
blance to those that face economically vibrant Mozambique. This is not
to say that what happens in one country has no effect on others, nor that
there are no common issues affecting all countries across the region. But
it is to say that broad analyses and simple generalizations make little
sense when economic performance and political systems have diverged
so much in recent years.
The world has understood this about Asia for some time. When ana-
lysts discuss the spectacular economic performance in “Asia” during the
last forty years, they do not mean the world’s largest and most populous
continent as a whole. They do not lump together North and South Korea,
Myanmar and Thailand, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia, or Laos and
90 Journal of Democracy

China. They have long understood that while some countries in the re-
gion share important trends and achievements, not all countries do, and
that it makes little sense to put them all together in one analytic pot of
stew. They know that the remarkable democratic progress of Indonesia
over the last decade is not made suspect by democracy’s absence in
Cambodia, and that Malaysia’s economic dynamism is not somehow
cheapened by Nepal’s stagnation. It is time to start making similar dis-
tinctions when it comes to Africa.
The present essay—which is based on my recent book Emerging Afri-
ca: How 17 Countries Are Leading the Way and builds on an earlier paper
coauthored with President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia4—is about a
group of seventeen emerging African countries, home to more than 300
million people, which have seen dramatic improvements in economic
growth, poverty reduction, and political accountability since the mid-
1990s. Another half-dozen “threshold” countries have seen change that is
promising, but less dramatic, less sustained, or more recent. These latter
countries include Sierra Leone and Liberia. Each has recorded rapid eco-
nomic growth while building democracy and markedly improving civil
liberties and the quality of governance since an armed conflict ended—in
Sierra Leone in 2002, and in Liberia the following year.
The 23 emerging and threshold countries listed in the accompanying
Table are not restricted to one corner of SSA, but are spread across its
western, eastern, central, and southern parts. Most are coastal, but sev-
eral are landlocked. Their colonial histories differ widely. Significant-
ly, none is an oil exporter. Several of Africa’s oil-exporting countries
also have grown rapidly in recent years, but such countries’ underlying
dynamics are so different—and their prospects for sustained progress
so questionable—that they are excluded from consideration here. The
emerging countries are not defined by commodity booms. While prices
for many exports have risen rapidly in recent years, on the whole com-
modity prices have moved against these countries since the mid-1990s.
Some of the emerging countries are large; others are quite small. Their
aggregate population, however, is weighty: With a combined 300 mil-
lion people, they are roughly equivalent to France, Germany, Italy,
Spain, and the United Kingdom combined.
What the emerging African countries share is a clear break from the
past and the beginnings of a wide-ranging economic, political, and de-
velopment turnaround dating back to the mid-1990s. Consider some of
the key changes in these countries:

• Since 1996, real rates of annual economic growth in each country

have been at least 2 percent per capita—a common standard indicat-
ing reasonably good economic performance over time. Across the
group, the growth rate has averaged 3.2 percent per capita, equiva-
lent to overall GDP growth of more than 5 percent per year.
Steven Radelet 91

Table—Income Growth in the Emerging African Countries

Emerging Countries Annual Income Growth per Cumulative Increase
Capita, 1996–2008 in Average Real
Income, 1996–2008
Botswana 4.1% 68%
Burkina Faso 2.8% 43%
Cape Verde 4.0% 67%
Ethiopia 4.1% 65%
Ghana 2.6% 40%
Lesotho 2.3% 33%
Mali 2.5% 37%
Mauritius 3.7% 61%
Mozambique 5.3% 96%
Namibia 2.4% 36%
Rwanda 3.7% 60%
S~ao Tomé and Príncipe 5.0% 40%
Seychelles 2.5% 37%
South Africa 2.0% 29%
Tanzania 3.0% 46%
Uganda 3.8% 61%
Zambia 1.8%* 25%
Average 3.2% 50%
Threshold Countries
Benin 1.3% 18%
Liberia 3.1% (2005–2008) 13%
Kenya 2.4% (2003–2008) 15%
Malawi 1.2% 15%
Senegal 1.4% 20%
Sierra Leone 3.7% (2003–2008) 24%
*We include Zambia even though its 13-year growth rate is slightly lower than 2 percent
because its annual average growth rate from 1999 to 2008 was 2.3 percent.
Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators; data for South Africa are from the
South African Reserve Bank.

• The share of people living below the poverty line (that is, on an in-
come of US$1.25 per day or less) dropped from 59 percent in 1993
to 48 percent by 2005—a huge drop for a twelve-year period.
• Trade and investment have more than doubled, and financial re-
turns on investment are much higher.
• School-enrollment, school-completion, and literacy rates have all
been on the rise. In the emerging countries, millions more children
are now in school every year. Educational levels for girls, in par-
ticular, are climbing from their once abysmally low levels.
• Outside those countries badly affected by the HIV/AIDS pandem-
ic, health indicators are generally improving. For example, child
mortality (deaths under five years old) in the emerging countries
declined from 134 per 1,000 in 1985 to 102 today.
92 Journal of Democracy

• Population-growth and fertility rates have begun to decline

throughout Africa, but especially in the emerging countries, where
the former rate has steadily dropped, going from 2.6 percent in the
early 1990s to below 2 percent in 2006.

Consider the economic turnaround in the emerging countries: Between

1975 and 1995, their recorded economic growth per person was near zero.
But between 1996 and 2008, they achieved growth per capita averaging
3.2 percent per year, powering a full 50 percent increase in average in-
comes in just thirteen years. By any standard, this turnaround is huge.
Critically, there have been equally significant changes in political
systems and governance. Across Africa, democracies are replacing
dictatorships. “Big men” linger, but their day is drawing to a close.
According to the widely used Freedom House and Polity IV ratings,
the number of countries in Africa meeting basic standards of democra-
cy (an average score of 4.0 or lower on Freedom House’s seven-point
scale and a Polity IV score of 0 or higher on a scale running from -10
to +10) has grown from just 3 in 1989 to more than 20 today, including
13 of the 17 emerging countries and all 6 threshold countries. The four
exceptions among the emerging countries, all of which nonetheless
have improved their scores since 1989, are Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanza-
nia (which qualifies according to Freedom House but not Polity IV),
and Uganda.
The democratic progress in the remaining thirteen emerging coun-
tries is not just about holding elections. Instead, the changes are deeper
and include sustained movement toward greater adherence to basic stan-
dards of political rights and civil liberties, more freedom of the press,
a much more vibrant civil society, greater transparency, and stronger
checks and balances. And the seventeen emerging countries have seen
marked improvements in the quality of governance as measured by sev-
eral indicators, reflecting less conflict and political violence, stronger
adherence to the rule of law, and lower levels of corruption.

Five Fundamental Changes

The turnaround is neither cyclical nor temporary. It persisted through
the global recession and falling commodity prices of the late 1990s. It
has continued even though import prices have risen faster than export
prices for these export-dependent countries. And the emerging Afri-
can countries appear to be weathering the current worldwide downturn
better than most developing countries. All this suggests that what we
are seeing is not merely the business cycle at work, but rather a re-
flection of deeper changes taking place in the political, economic, and
social spheres of these countries. These changes are the beginnings of
a transformation—fraught with risks and with no guarantee of ultimate
Steven Radelet 93

success—that provides a stronger foundation for continued economic

growth, democratic progress, and poverty reduction in the future.
At least five fundamental changes are at work. The first two—the rise
of more democratic and accountable governments and the introduction
of more sensible economic policies—together ignited the turnaround in
the 1990s, and have helped to keep it going. The next three—the end of
the debt crisis and changing relationships with the international commu-
nity, the spread of new technologies, and the emergence of a new gen-
eration of public and private leaders—began to kick in after the recovery
had begun, but have been critical to sustaining it. Looking forward, it
is the combination of all five that provides the promise that emerging
Africa’s initial success can be sustained and expanded into the future.
Each of the key changes merits further discussion.

The rise of more democratic and accountable governments. As eco-

nomic crisis tightened its grip in the 1980s, many authoritarian govern-
ments lost both the last shreds of their legitimacy and the economic and
financial resources that they had been using to maintain control. Protestors
began to call for economic and political change, and governments lost key
backers. With the end of the Cold War and apartheid in the early 1990s, au-
thoritarian leaders increasingly were forced to give way to democratically
elected governments. The number of democracies in SSA jumped from
just 3 in 1989 to 23 in 2008, including most of the emerging countries.
Crucially, democracy has meant not merely elections, but greater ad-
herence to basic political and civil rights, more freedom of the press, and
stronger political institutions. On the Freedom House scale (where 1 means
most free and 7 least) civil liberties in the 23 African democracies have
improved from an average score of 4.9 in 1990 to 2.8 in 2008. Legislatures
and other government institutions of restraint such as court systems, local
governments, and electoral commissions are slowly growing stronger.
And in the emerging countries, the shift toward democracy has gone
hand in hand with improvements in the quality of governance more broad-
ly. For example, while the emerging countries improved their average
rank on the World Bank’s “control of corruption” score from 104th to 89th
between 1996 and 2008, the other countries in SSA fell on average from
140th to 148th. A similar pattern appears on the five other World Bank gov-
ernance indicators: In each case, the average score for the emerging coun-
tries has improved, while for other countries in SSA it has deteriorated.
The movement toward democracy and better governance has been
uneven and remains incomplete. But it is real. It has been at the core of
the renaissance in these countries, and it is fundamental to continuing it
into the future.
The implementation of more sensible economic policies. Twenty
years ago, nearly all African economies were effectively bankrupt, with
large budget deficits, double-digit inflation, growing debt burdens, thriv-
94 Journal of Democracy

ing black markets, shortages of basic commodities, and rising poverty.

Economic mismanagement and the heavy hand of the state scared off in-
vestors, generated capital flight, and led to stagnation and rising poverty.
But in the late 1980s, the emerging countries’ economic policies be-
gan to change, and they have continued to do so. Today they bear little
resemblance to the past. Black markets are a distant memory. Budget
and trade deficits are more sustainable. The business environment is
friendlier, and barriers to trade and investment are lower. Marketing
boards have largely disappeared, and there is a better balance between
the state and the private sector. As with governance, the changes in eco-
nomic policy are far from perfect, but they represent a vast improvement
over what was the case twenty years ago, and remain central to hopes for
sustained growth and development.
It was the interplay between economic reform and political change
that ignited the turnaround. The economic crisis itself contained the
seeds of political change. As the crisis deepened in the 1980s, the fail-
ures of past approaches became starkly evident, and borrowing and oth-
er financing options disappeared. The old approaches could no longer
be financed. Governments were forced to adopt economic reforms and
austerity measures in order to close their budget and trade deficits. The
austerity measures accelerated protests and calls for change. Whereas
in the past, authoritarian governments had been able to contain protests
by using budget resources and other measures to placate civil servants,
favored businesses, the military, and other supporters, by the late 1980s
many of these regimes no longer had the financial or political resources
to do so. The winds of global change gave the final push: As the Cold
War and apartheid ended, strong forms of socialism and authoritarian
control fell into disrepute. People across Africa were fed up with the old
systems. Forced to hold elections, most governments were replaced by
more pluralistic and democratic regimes.
The economic policy reforms initially had little effect on economic
growth, in large part because political instability grew sharply in the
early 1990s with the uncertainty around the new elections. But as the po-
litical changes began to stabilize—especially following the election of
Nelson Mandela as the president of South Africa in 1994—confidence
began to grow and economies began to respond. The revitalization of
emerging Africa had begun.
The Figure below summarizes the key changes of the early 1990s.
The top panel shows the broad pattern of changes in economic policy,
encapsulated by changes in the prevalence of so-called antigrowth syn-
dromes, a term coined by the landmark Economic Growth in Africa re-
search project.5 The research team identified four syndromes that lie at
the core of Africa’s poor economic performance. Three were directly
related to economic policy: heavy-handed regimes of state control; sys-
tems of redistribution that rewarded political allies and ethnic groups
Steven Radelet 95

fIGure—maJor chanGes In The emerGInG counTrIes: economIc

PolIcY reform, PolITIcal chanGe, anD Income Per caPITa
20

Policy Reform: 15
Number of
antigrowth 10
syndromes
5

0 1
2
Democracy: 3
Political rights 4
and civil liberties
5
6
160 7
140
Economic
Performance: 120
Income per
capita 100
(1977 = $US100)
80
60
1960 1967 1974 1981 1988 1995 2002
Note: Antigrowth syndromes are from the AERC Explaining African Economic Growth
Project, political rights and civil liberties are from Freedom House, and income per capita
is from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators.

at the expense of economic growth; and heavy borrowing and asset-

stripping that sacrificed future income for present gain. (The fourth syn-
drome was state breakdown and political instability.) Notice the sharp
reduction in these syndromes in the emerging countries beginning in the
mid-1980s—a clear indication of the introduction of strong economic-
policy reforms. Remarkably, by 1995 the emerging countries were es-
sentially free of all these growth-strangling syndromes.
As a result, the overall climate for private business has improved
markedly in recent years, especially in the emerging countries. The
costs of starting a business and registering property, the amount of red
tape and restrictions that businesses face, and the hassles involved in
the pursuit of commercial court claims have all declined considerably.
In fact, the costs of starting a business have dropped by more than 75
percent on average in just the last six years.
The middle panel depicts the changes in political systems in the
emerging countries, as captured by the improvements in Freedom
House’s indices of political rights and civil liberties. Political change
began in force in 1989 and 1990, not long after the initiation of eco-
nomic changes, and accelerated rapidly throughout the early 1990s.
The bottom panel shows the economic renaissance in the emerging
countries, as indicated by the rapid increase in income per capita. As
96 Journal of Democracy

antigrowth syndromes were removed and political changes stabilized in

the mid-1990s, economic growth began to accelerate, and corresponding
improvements in a wide variety of other economic, social, and poverty
indicators came in to play. By 2008, incomes per capita had increased
by an average of 50 percent.
The Figure suggests the strong positive relationship between demo-
cratic governance and economic performance in Africa. Globally, there
has been an animated debate about whether authoritarian or democratic
governments have been associated with stronger economic performance
in developing countries over the last several decades.6 Overall, the rela-
tionship is mixed, but in Africa it is clear that democratic governments
(starting with Botswana and Mauritius in the 1970s) have been success-
ful, while authoritarian governments have by and large been failures.

The end of the decades-long debt crisis, and with it major changes
in Africa’s relationship with the international community. The 1980s
debt crisis hit Africa particularly hard. Stagnant economies and heavy
borrowing—a result of both poor economic management by the bor-
rowers and aggressive lending by some of the creditors—created huge
debt burdens by the late 1980s that weighed down these economies and
made the challenge of recovery even greater. As the crisis deepened, the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) took on a much more prominent role
in Africa. Programs for “stabilization and structural adjustment” effec-
tively mandated by the IMF and the World Bank became the centerpiece
of both economic policy and the relationship between African countries
and the donor community.
Today, nearly a quarter-century after its onset, the debt crisis is fi-
nally winding down for most African countries. Debt burdens are sig-
nificantly lower than they were just ten years ago, thanks primarily to
the Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) Initiative, which is freeing
up financial resources and relieving the time burden on senior policy
makers, who no longer need to constantly reschedule huge debts.
But just as important, as debt burdens have fallen, relationships between
these countries and the donor community have fundamentally changed.
Country-led poverty-reduction strategies have replaced the heavy condi-
tionality of IMF and World Bank stabilization and structural-adjustment
programs as the centerpiece of economic policy making and donor pro-
grams. The IMF’s role is less dominant than it once was, and donor con-
ditions are more in line with countries’ priorities. As debt burdens have
fallen and economic policies have improved, relations with donors have
become much healthier and less adversarial, providing a stronger basis for
donor support to bolster the emerging countries’ continuing development.

The spread of new technologies that promote political accountabil-

ity and create fresh business opportunities. Cell phones are becoming
Steven Radelet 97

ubiquitous across Africa, and Internet access is growing quickly. It seems

as though there is a cell phone in every hand and an Internet café on ev-
ery corner, and Africans have proven enormously resourceful in finding
useful applications for both technologies. In the most remote corners of
the countryside, people employ mobile phones to relay real-time data on
prices and shipments and to facilitate funds transfers and other banking
services via simple text messages. Cell phones are enabling health-care
workers to provide early warnings of disease outbreaks, and to transmit
and maintain reliable health information for better case management. At
the same time, the Internet is shrinking distances, facilitating the flow
of information, and helping to overcome the constraints of geography.
Although so far the Internet has had less impact than cell phones, it is
creating new jobs and opportunities in fields such as data entry and other
services. And both technologies are widening political involvement by
enabling the steady flow of debate and information that is the lifeblood
of political accountability and transparency.
These new technologies—whose influence seems set only to grow—are
boosting productivity and incomes, helping the delivery of basic services,
and facilitating transparency and accountability. All these strengthen the
prospects for continued growth and development in these countries.

The emergence of a new generation of policy makers, activists, and

business leaders. Finally, a new generation of smart, energetic, and en-
trepreneurial political, social, and economic leaders is emerging. They
are African to the core, but with a globalized outlook that comes with the
Internet and easy air travel. Many have lived and studied abroad. They
are savvy, sharp, and entrepreneurial, capable of combining the best of
both worlds. They can be found rising through the ranks of government,
starting up businesses, working as local representatives of multinational
corporations, leading local NGOs and activist groups, and taking an in-
creasing role in political leadership. They are fed up with the unaccount-
able governments and economic stagnation of the past and are bringing
new ideas and new vision. They are also supplying governments with
much stronger professional and technical capacities in the making of
economic policy.
Together, these five changes bode a promising future. They are cor-
nerstones that the emerging countries can build on to deepen democ-
racy, strengthen accountability and good governance, create more and
broader economic opportunities, fight disease and illiteracy, and reduce
poverty.
Skeptical readers may recall that many African countries recorded
rapid economic growth in the 1960s, only to collapse. Fortunately, to-
day’s emerging countries are different in several key ways: There are
more of them, they are growing faster, and they have already sustained
their growth for longer periods. Moreover, they have stronger founda-
98 Journal of Democracy

tions on which to base their progress, starting with more accountable

and democratic governance. The distorting effects of decolonization and
the Cold War no longer twist their politics and economics. Instead, their
economic policies are much closer to the kinds of approaches that have
been successful in other developing countries. And perhaps most impor-
tant, there is a new generation of leaders in government and business
who have learned from the mistakes of the past and are determined not
to repeat them. The experience of the 1960s should temper our opti-
mism, but should not nullify it.

Breaking Out of Traps?

One way to think about the emerging countries is through the lens of
development traps. The notion of a “poverty trap,” in which low incomes
trap individuals and countries in a perpetual state of want, is an old idea
and has some plausibility. But as a general proposition, a pure poverty
trap focused on income alone does not hold up well. By today’s standards,
after all, the whole world was poor three-hundred years ago—so why are
we not all still poor today? And how have countries such as China and In-
donesia made the phenomenal economic progress that they have achieved
in recent years? Far from being trapped, most of the world is much better
off materially than it was a hundred or even fifty years ago.
Yet poverty itself is not the only possible trap. In recent years,
economists such as Jeffrey Sachs and Paul Collier have explained how
countries can face constraints other than just low incomes that make it
harder to fight poverty. Sachs emphasizes health and geography traps.7
Endemic diseases (malaria, AIDS) or adverse geographical factors such
as inaccessible terrain or a poor climate can play roles in keeping poor
countries poor by suppressing productivity, scaring off investors, and
perpetuating isolation from the larger global economy. Breaking away
is not impossible, but it is not easy. Sachs has also focused attention on
the resource curse: Poor countries may have few economic options other
than heavy reliance on natural-resource exports, but this reliance often
undermines incentives for economic diversification while breeding cor-
ruption and conflicts over control of the resources.8
Paul Collier picked up on the geography trap and the resource trap
and added two more: conflict and bad governance. 9 Low incomes
and slow growth make countries more vulnerable to conflict, and in
a vicious cycle, conflict keeps countries mired in poverty. Bad gov-
ernance keeps countries poor because it means that leaders are steal-
ing resources and undermining economic opportunities; and because
poverty itself makes it harder to build the legal, governmental, and
political institutions necessary to improve governance. Collier argues
that, while it is not impossible for a country to escape these traps, the
deck is stacked against it.
Steven Radelet 99

But the emerging African countries are beginning to break out of

such snares. Botswana and Mauritius began to emerge as long ago
as the 1970s, and have continued apace for several decades. For the
others, the process began in the late 1980s and early 1990s. At first,
a spike in conflict followed on the heels of economic and political
reforms, but by the mid-1990s the changes had taken hold. Stability,
not conflict, was becoming the order of the day. By the late 1990s,
conflict was sharply declining. With democracy had come better lead-
ership and greater accountability, pushed by the new generation of
smart activists and entrepreneurs. At the same time, these forces were
combining to help countries climb out of the bad-governance trap. The
bankruptcy of past economic approaches and the end of the Cold War
had discredited extreme forms of socialism, leading to more sensible
economic policies. Better economic policies, shrinking debt, and new
technologies were in turn reducing reliance on a narrow range of com-
modity exports and thereby beginning to ease the trap of the “resource
curse.”
South Africa, long an influential country and the home of SSA’s best-
developed economy, has been an important part of the turnaround. The
end of apartheid opened the door to democracy and greater political open-
ness not just in South Africa, but in many of its neighbors as well. South
Africa’s experience signaled that democracy and political pluralism could
work in Africa, bolstering the confidence of others across the region. And
it fostered an economic climate in which investment and trade were wel-
comed rather than shunned. Private capital from South Africa has surged
into commerce, banking, brewing, and mining in its neighborhood. South
Africa’s impact shows what can happen when a neighbor shifts from
bad to good. It is no accident that several of South Africa’s immediate
neighbors—Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, and Namibia—are among
the emerging countries, as they have all benefited from South Africa’s
revival.
In effect, the five fundamental changes described above are giving the
emerging countries a way out of these development traps. The founda-
tions for sustained economic growth, poverty reduction, democracy, and
improved governance are now in the making. They may even be con-
nected to one another in a virtuous circle that mirrors the vicious circle
of dictatorship, poor governance, and weak economic performance that
plagued Africa from the late 1970s through the 1980s. In most cases,
economic reforms started first, followed closely by an expansion of po-
litical freedoms. These two together led to an acceleration in economic
growth and an improvement in governance.
The strengthening of democracy probably helped improve gover-
nance, but improvements in the quality of governance almost certainly
have helped to sustain democracy. Similarly, the improvements in de-
mocracy and governance have helped to put and keep in place better
100 Journal of Democracy

economic policies that have accelerated growth, while the faster growth
rates have made it easier to deliver tangible benefits to citizens, thereby
reinforcing in turn the shifts toward democracy and better governance.

An Uncertain but Hopeful Future

The early signs are encouraging. Hope for the future has returned
in these countries. And yet, even though the five fundamental changes
are giving countries the opportunity to succeed, there is no guarantee
that they will do so. These countries are not home free and have not
yet permanently broken the bonds of poverty. On the contrary, slipping
backward toward stagnation or worse remains a real possibility.
The risks and challenges are several. The recent global financial crisis
has made the task of sound economic management more complex. As
these countries become more integrated into the global economy, they
must handle volatility that is beyond their control. The emerging coun-
tries are much better positioned to manage external shocks than they
were thirty years ago. They passed a major test during the recent crisis, in
which the downturn was less severe in Africa’s emerging countries than
elsewhere. But their ability to ride out future storms is no sure bet; it will
require shrewd decisions on economic policy, plus a bit of good luck.
Some countries face the risk of internal political instability. Although
the incidence of coups, civil wars, purges, and other conflicts has sharply
diminished in these countries, conflict has not completely disappeared,
and it could rear its ugly head in response to declining economic pros-
pects or poor policy choices. Although most of the emerging countries
have moved far along the path to democracy, several have not come as
far and are at more risk of reversal.
Many countries continue to face the ravages of the HIV/AIDS pan-
demic. Global warming and climate change could destroy nascent eco-
nomic progress, curtail economic opportunities, and generate political
and social tensions that are hard to predict.
In some countries, it is possible that the early economic progress
could simply stall once the earliest and easiest gains are achieved.
Sachs, Collier, and others have argued that it was much easier for coun-
tries such as Mauritius to take advantage of the opportunities afforded
by globalization in the 1970s and 1980s, when they could diversify into
manufacturing with little competition. Today it is much harder, as firms
from many more countries compete in global markets. But of course
there are two sides to this coin. China and India are obviously export-
ing more, creating competition for potential African exporters. And yet
they are also investing and importing more—a lot more—which creates
new opportunities for entrepreneurial African firms to take advantage of
openings in Chinese and Indian markets.
There is no denying the risks. But there are good reasons to be optimis-
Steven Radelet 101

tic that most of the emerging countries will continue their progress and sus-
tain solid economic growth, poverty reduction, and stronger governance.
Doing so surely matters to the 300 million people who live in these
countries. But in an increasingly interconnected world, what happens
in these countries also affects the rest of the world. Strengthening these
countries enhances their ability to fight disease, control drug trafficking
and other international criminal activities, improve local and regional
security, promote economic opportunities, and contain other problems
that otherwise might spread to the rest of the world. And just as impor-
tant, the countries of emerging Africa can provide examples for people
living in failed and fragile states elsewhere in Africa and around the
globe that there is hope for digging out of poverty and conflict and mak-
ing progress toward a brighter future.

NOTES

1. Poverty rates, based on a poverty line of US$1.25 in purchasing power per day (US$450
per year), are drawn from the World Bank PovcalNet database online. See also Shaohua Chen
and Martin Ravallion, “The Developing World Is Poorer than We Thought, but No Less Suc-
cessful in the Fight Against Poverty,” World Bank Policy Research Working Paper no. 4703,
August 2008; available at [Link] Unless otherwise stated,
all other data are drawn from the World Bank’s “World Development Indicators” online.

2. See, for example, Carrie Manning, “Mozambique’s Slide into One-Party Rule,”
Journal of Democracy 21 (April 2010): 151–65.

3. For an excellent and very readable overview of the main issues, trends, and players
in Africa’s contemporary development, see Todd Moss, African Development: Making
Sense of the Issues and Actors (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2007).

4. Steven Radelet, Emerging Africa: How 17 Countries Are Leading the Way (Wash-
ington, D.C.: Center for Global Development, 2010); Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Steven
Radelet, “The Good News Out of Africa: Democracy, Stability, and the Renewal of
Growth and Development,” Center for Global Development Essay (2008), available at
[Link]/content/publications/detail/15416.

5. Benno Ndulu et al., eds., The Political Economy of Economic Growth in Africa,
1960–2000, vols. 1 and 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

6. For a recent contribution that provides strong evidence in favor of democracies

over nondemocracies, see Morton H. Halperin, Joseph T. Siegle, and Michael M. Wein-
stein, The Democracy Advantage: How Democracies Promote Prosperity and Peace (New
York: Routledge, 2010).

7. See Jeffrey D. Sachs et al., “Ending Africa’s Poverty Trap,” Brookings Papers on Eco-
nomic Activity 1 (2004): 117–216; and Jeffrey D. Sachs, The End of Poverty: Economic Pos-
sibilities for Our Times (New York: Penguin, 2006).

8. Jeffrey D. Sachs and Andrew M. Warner, “Natural Resource Abundance and Eco-
nomic Growth,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. W5398, De-
cember 1995. For an earlier exposition of this idea, see Alan Gelb, Oil Windfalls: Blessing
or Curse? (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988).

9. Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What
Can Be Done About It (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).