Talk:Economy of Africa

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Economy of Africa is the current African Collaboration of the Month

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Economy of Africa appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on November 13, 2004.

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Great, great maps. ✏ Sverdrup 18:54, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Okay, I perhaps should also add some constructive critique: :-)

• First, the fact box; should we not express the numbers in words (I propose 831,2 millions and 539 thousand million US Dollars for the first two). Also, the statistic "Female economic activity" could use more explanation. Do we have an article we can link this to, so that we know how this is defined?
• There are large sections named "Causes", "Effects" and "Attempted solutions"; these should perhaps we renamed, it is not immediately clear what they refer to (certainly not what has caused africa to have an economy!)
• Overall, the article should perhaps not (deliberately vaugely stated) take the stance that Africa is a land in need of help, solutions, new politics, but rather state the facts.

Last, this is a huge topic that is hard to overview and even harder to present in full, with all the different aspects and different regions and situations. You've done a great work to begin to fill Wikipedia's emtpy holes. ✏ Sverdrup 19:12, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments I agree with most of them and have implemented some of the easy fixes.

• I do not know much about the "Female economic activity" number. It is a statistic the UN has for every country but I couldn't get much of an explanation for what they consider "economic activity".
• I'm a history grad so my main focus tends to be on causation, origins, and development and I have thus likely spent too little time describing the current state of affairs. Finding numbers for and descriptions of the current situation is also quite difficult and any additions of such information would be much appreciated. I do however think that the question of "Why is Africa so poor?" is an extremely important one and that this article is the best place to present the various explanations and answers.
• I do like the maps, but I must say I find Image:African_gdp_growth.png very depressing.

-SimonP 19:37, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)

I find Image:African_gdp_growth.png takes about a half minute for a colour blind person to understand, I think the dark green needs to me made lighter or the dark red darker. --Joe D 21:27, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Contents 1 Wow. 2 Great Job countering the systemic bias 3 gdp growth image 4 Featured article? 5 GDP 6 Billion/Thousand Million 7 1 billion --> 13%? 8 Trends in GDP per capita 9 Wikipedia:Article Improvement Drive 10 Determinants? 11 Intelligence 12 Debt Relief 13 2002/2003

[edit] Wow.

All I have to say is WOW. At first, I was kind-of disappointed when I saw that Japanese toilet had finished second to this – but this is truly a phenomenal article. A monumental undertaking. Kudos. BLANKFAZE | (что??) 09:23, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Great Job countering the systemic bias

Good to see results from this work.

[edit] gdp growth image

I'm not the least bit colorblind, and the multicolored image Image:African gdp growth.png does nothing for me. Why not just put the monochromatic one (this) in the article and be done with it? --Yath 01:35, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I agree. ✏ Sverdrup 02:00, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Featured article?

How did this get to be a featured article? After effects of colonialism? Africa has gone downhill ever since colonialism ended! They had more ill effects from the cold war than from colonialism. Foriegn powers cannot be blamed for africa's failures, especially not by a supposedly neutral narrative. I need to keep a closer eye on FAC.... Sam [Spade] 11:13, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It's certainly very comprehensive and detailed, but I have to agree with you on that bit. Africa is the only continent that has grown poorer since the end of the European empires, and that's due more to the Cold War and especially despotic and corrupt leadership than anything else. I also cannot believe the article doesn't mention NEPAD, which is the AU's official economic recovery plan for Africa... Impi 13:31, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hopefully the AU will be as good for Africa as the EU for europe, I agree that this is a theme which ought to be more present. I'd really like it if someone rephrased the sentance in the intro about the ending of colonialism so the dispute header can be removed, I would but I can't find a phrase w proper prose. It is important to note that Colonialism is still ending (if it is indeed ending at all) in some areas, often in violence (seizure of estates, rioting, etc..., the Ivory Coast comes to mind). There is also the complex question of European or american intervention, and if it will lead to a return to/increase of, colonialism. Sam [Spade] 14:47, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I gave it a shot. There's undoubtedly still room for improvement. JRM 14:57, 2004 Nov 13 (UTC)

I tried my hand as well, and removed the dispute header. I think there is room for expansions of ideas relating to these particulars thruout the article. Sam [Spade] 16:57, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Just so I've made a thorough nuisance of myself, I should say that I have some criticisms which are summarised on the main Africa talk page in the sections dealing with the economies. It's well written stylistically but there are important gaps. This time I will make changes in say two weeks time in order to allow for some feedback Sez who 05:44, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] GDP

I'm adding some GDP numbers from [1], and making it per capita from the 831 million number. - Jerryseinfeld 21:08, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Billion/Thousand Million

While "billion" in the USA denotes 1,000,000,000, or 10 to the 9th power (1E9), it is often taken as 1E12 in "British" realms. Sverdrup's suggestion of "thousand million" is well taken, but seems ungainly. An alternative and unambiguous convention expresses large quantities as "(millions)" so that 1E9 would be "1", 1E12 would be "1,000" and 10,200,000 would be "10.2". The European use of "." as a marker for thousands and "," as the decimal indicator (the reverse of USA convention) should pose less of a problem for non-USA visitors, so that the convention proposed here should be generally satisfactory. --Myron 09:55, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

As far as I am aware, billion is very rarely taken (in English, as least) to mean anything other than 1E9 these days: the British government stopped using the "British" 1E12 meaning some 30 years ago. See billion. -- ALoan (Talk) 12:20, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] 1 billion --> 13%?

How can 1 billion be 13% of the world population? The last time I check the world population is about 6.3 billion, 1 billion is closer to 16%.

Also there is some confusion with the use of the world liberal in context of the Washington consensus. While correct in the European usage, it is not correct in the common American usage. I have changed this to "neoliberal" which is correct in both usages in the description of the Washington Consensus.

Edit: On second glance, there is a seeming contradiction in the article. How this became the featured article is beyond me, as the table says 1 billion but the article says 800 million. According to Geohive, the actual population is about 887 million as of 2005, (which is about 14%) so that is what I am going to put in the article.

http://www.geohive.com/global/geo.php?xml=world&xsl=pop_region

A.Rod (8 October 2005, 21:23)

[edit] Trends in GDP per capita

It would be interesting to have some sort of indication of the actual change in sub-saharan gdp per capita over a long time peiod (eg.50 years). I understand that Africa isn't rich, but it would be nice to see the trends more clearly. Can this information be found?

[edit] Wikipedia:Article Improvement Drive

Architecture of Africa is currently nominated on Wikipedia:Article Improvement Drive. Come to this page and support it with your vote. Help us improve this article to featured status.--Fenice 08:46, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Determinants?

Who said that Africa's poverty should not be the case according to modern economic theory? Someone else has already mentioned corruption, resource dependence (Dutch disease),unequal trading partnerships and theories of foreign direct investment which do explain much of it quite well. In fact given the current international trade setup, the traditional means by which developing economies progress have been eliminated so it is not really possible for African economies to emulate India or China and their poverty is eminently predictable (eg see "What Strategies Are Viable For Developing Countries Today? The World Trade Organisation And The Shrinking Of Development Space by R H Wade. Review of International Political Economy Vol 10 Issue 4 Nov 2003").Doc Meroe 04:04, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Sorry to raise a controversial point, but given the substantial (though controversial) evidence for a correlation between race and intelligence, and the uncontroverial correlation between intelligence and income, isn't the ethnic makeup of Africa a rather important economic factor? 84.70.132.186 10:50, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Intelligence

Re the deletion of the Intelligence section linking to the IQ and the Wealth of Nations article, I have reverted this - whether or not anyone regards this theory as racist, there is an article on Wikipedia about it as well as several related articles. Wikipedia includes articles on all kinds of things that many people don't like; the fact that you don't like a theory is not a reason to delete it. 84.70.132.186 20:10, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

I've again removed the section. That a theory has an article on Wikipedia does not mean that it has any importance or validity. The book in question has generated some controversy, but virtually no one believes it is credible. - SimonP 23:34, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

There are many academics who believe race and intelligence are linked, and certainly thousands who think that intelligence and wealth are linked (which is hardly surprising). There may be controversy about whether the former link exists, but there is no controversy that a significant number of academics who are expert in the field believe that it does. See for example Race and intelligence, or the hundreds of books and papers listed in Race and intelligence (References), many of which support this. So I have again reverted this. I hope this doesn't turn into a revert war, but there's no doubt in my mind that a mention of this (including that it is controversial) and links to the relevant articles are 100% valid and appropriate for a Wikipedia article. 84.70.132.186 10:31, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

I've also now qualified it to point out that a link between race and intelligence is not required for there to be a link between intelligence and wealth. For example, it is uncontroversial that iodine deficiency (prevalent in Africa) significantly affects IQ, and it is uncontroversial that lower IQ reduces wealth. So even if national variation in IQ has a purely environmental explanation, it is nonetheless likely to affect national wealth. 84.70.132.186 11:17, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

The issue is not just that it is a dubious, though it is, the main issue is that this just isn't a very notable theory and it has been all but ignored by pretty much all mainstream scholars. Mentioning the IQ studies in this article, would be like mentioning zero-point energy devices in our quantum physics article. - SimonP 12:38, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

I have deleted the intelligence section and I'm amazed that someone actually put something like that in an article that's supposed to be about Africa's economy. To seriously suggest that Africa is poor because its inhabitants are unintelligent is to build an argument on a widely discredited foundation. Doc Meroe 01:21, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

A large portion of this article isn't directly about Africa's economy, anyway. Much of the article is spent on mere conjecture ("Determinants"). The intelligence issue has just as much of a place in it as do the many other unproven possible determinants. Peoplesunionpro 03:30, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Debt Relief

This section initially states that "Each year Africa sends more money to western bankers in interest on its debts than it receives in foreign aid from these countries" but later it states "external debt payments flowing out of the continent are of about the same size as the external foreign aid flowing in to the continent". As such I have removed the latter statement as an examination of the World Bank website shows that it is incorrect. Doc Meroe 00:14, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 2002/2003

The side panels states both:

• "During 2003 unless otherwise stated"; and
• "Numbers are mostly from 2002."

Someone might want to look into that. —Pengo ^{talk · contribs} 22:51, 16 September 2006 (UTC)