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Mozambique

African Successes

Submitted by Shanta on Thu, 2009-09-17 11:44

In recent years, a broad swath of African countries has begun to show a remarkable dynamism.  From Mozambique’s impressive growth rate (averaging 8% p.a. for more than a decade) to Kenya’s emergence as a major global supplier of cut flowers, from M-pesa’s mobile phone-based cash transfers to KickStart’s low-cost irrigation technology for small-holder farmers, and from Rwanda’s gorilla tourism to Lagos City’s Bus Rapid Transit system, Africa is seeing a dramatic transformation.  This favorable trend is spurred by, among other things, stronger leadership, better governance, an improving business climate, innovation, market-based solutions, a more involved citizenry, and an increasing reliance on home-grown solutions.  More and more, Africans are driving African development. 

The global economic crisis of 2008-09 threatens to undermine the optimism that Africa can harness this dynamism for long-lasting development.  In light of this, it might be useful to re-visit recent achievements.  The African Successes study aims to do just that.

The study will identify a wide range of development successes (see list), from which around 20 cases will be selected for in-depth study.  The analysis of each successful experience will evaluate the following: (1) the drivers of success—what has worked and why; (2) the sustainability of the successful outcome(s); and (3) the potential for scaling up successful experiences.  African success stories offer valuable insights and practical lessons to other countries in the region. 

I welcome your comments and suggestions for success stories. Click here to see the list of what we have come up with so far.

A Mozambique Paradox

Submitted by Shanta on Mon, 2008-10-27 08:57

There is widespread consensus that financial development is critical to economic growth, globally, and in Africa. Yet Mozambique, a country with very low levels of financial development (in a recent survey, only 13 percent of firms had obtained credit from the banking sector, rural credit is almost nonexistent), registered a GDP growth rate of over 8 percent a year over the last decade.

On a recent visit to Mozambique, I tried to understand this apparent paradox, but ended up with even more puzzles. A group of prominent bankers said the problem was that enterprises lacked managerial and accounting skills, which is why they didn’t want to lend to them. They insisted that subsidizing credit will not solve this problem. In a separate meeting, one of the most successful entrepreneurs in Mozambique said that even he has trouble getting credit; he needs to put up his factories as collateral, and even then it takes about seven months. Finally, the government’s plan to stimulate agricultural production includes a program of credit subsidies to farmers to buy tractors and other inputs.

So, while everybody seems to agree that access to finance is a constraint (which begs the question of how Mozambique grew so fast), there are different views on how to relax that constraint. I look forward to your comments and suggestions.