HOW COVID-19 HAS AFFECTED AFRICA’S DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

For the first 15 years of the new millennium, several countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) have experienced longs spells of “sustained economic growth” that translated into considerable progress along the developmental path and in a sizable reduction in the level of poverty in the continent. While the literature (see, for example, Arrighi 2002) has long noted that SSA had alternated periods of economic expansion with periods of economic contraction, the sustained economic growth that SSA experienced at the beginning of the new millennium represented a certain novelty—because it reflected changes in both domestic and international conditions. Recent studies (see, for example, Pelizzo, Kinyondo, and Nwokora 2018) have observed, in this respect, that Africa’s development in the new millennium resulted from the interaction of domestic factors (such as the spread of democracy in the continent), improvements in public health and in the level of good governance, and international factors (such as the international community’s new approach to aid and development, the rise of China, the fact that Africa’s debt was canceled, and a growing inflow of foreign direct investments). After identifying such factors, and their interaction, as the main determinants of growth and development in the continent, Pelizzo, Kinyondo, and Nwokora (2018) hypothesized that the disappearance of one or more of the success factors identified in their study could have a detrimental impact on African economies’ ability to grow, slow down their progress along the developmental path, and prevent them from further reducing poverty in the continent