What's really holding back Africa's economic growth?

What is the greatest barrier limiting economic growth in Africa? That was the question put to four experts at Devex’s event, Unlocking Africa’s potential: The path to economic transformation on the continent, on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly this week. Perhaps inevitably, each responded through their own experience. Transformative policies Chidi Blyden, deputy CEO of the Millennium Challenge Corporation, highlighted the need for good governance, stability, and security along with evidence-based investment. For MCC, which is well-known for its insistence on tying investment to good governance, the focus is on finding the sectors with the most transformative potential for a country. In Lesotho, for instance, that meant MCC lobbying the government to ensure women’s rights were properly factored into a new land reform bill, designed to boost the country’s agricultural sector. “We’re now working on the access to land and irrigation plans that will allow them to be the kind of producer that they want to be,” Blyden said. “And that will in turn help them trade more, not just in situ but outside of the country, therefore leading to more … economic security, food security, that will allow the country to be a mass producer in southern Africa.” Risk perception Bright Simons, vice president of the IMANI Centre for Policy and Education, and founder of mPedigree, said Africa suffered from what he called a “strategic misrepresentation worldwide of both the opportunities on the continent and the risks.” And for Daouda Sembene, founder and CEO of AfriCatalyst, that misconception is most evident in the high cost of capital in Africa, which in turn stymies infrastructure investment, an essential ingredient in sustainable growth. Agency and a voice “Evidence is telling us that we could invest $15 [billion] to $20 billion selling cash directly to people living in extreme poverty, and we will change the story of poverty in the world,” Caroline Teti, vice president for risk, safeguarding and compliance at Give Directly, said. “Can we try this? ... Can we entrust people with resources so that we have a bottom-up catalyst, a catalyst of development and transformation in Africa?” Otherwise, Teti said, conversations about systems change and artificial intelligence will miss the mark. People on the front line of poverty don’t know about AI, she warned. “They are waiting for food. They are waiting for their daughter to go to school. They are waiting for an opportunity, small as it is. Do they have a voice? … That for me is the missing thing.”