ONGERI JOHN, Dar Es Salaam | Tuesday 11.15am.
THE Word Bank has blamed low levels of direct foreign investment in Africa on the constant negative reporting by Western media that portrays the continent as a “centre of misery and conflict”.
World Bank African chief economist Alan Gelb said that the region’s growing economic reconstruction and reconciliation programmes are ignored by the Western media in favour of superficial reports on local wars, Aids and other epidemics.
“It is a pity that the Western media’s reports on Africa are often far more sensational than the problems on the ground,” said Gelb while launching the Bank’s “Can Africa Claim the 21st Century?” report.
Pointing out that some African countries have achieved economic growth rates that exceeded their national population growths, Gelb said the Western media appears to misunderstand the significance of the continent’s economic and political rebirth.
A significant number of African countries, he said, have also succeeded in diversifying their exports through increased sales of non-traditional commodities.
This has already enhanced Africa’s share in world trade volumes. Tanzania, Burkina Faso, Kenya, Zambia and Zimbabwe are cited in the 52-page report prepared by the bank in collaboration with four other economic institutions in Africa as countries that have successfully diversified their export economies by expanding horticulture and floriculture.
Africa will, however, have to achieve an average national growth rate of 7% if it hopes to cut current poverty levels by half by 2015.
Gelb said that roughly 300-million of Africa’s 600-million residents currently lived on just US$0,65 dollars per day.
This can only be improved, Gelb’s report says, through the recapitalisation of production sectors such as agriculture and tourism and significant increases in investment in rural infrastructure where, majority of the continent’s residents live. — African Eye News