Just looking at East Africa, even Kenya's current HDI is at 0.575, and the rest of East Africa is much lower. Rwanda is at 0.534 (this is potentially suspect as Rwanda has been fudging numbers [0]), Tanzania is at 0.549, and Uganda is at 0.525.
It is a similar story in West Africa as well.
While there are some bright spots in human capital in Kenya, it's much less diffused than similar undeveloped to developed stories like Bangladesh or Vietnam, let alone China, India, Thailand, etc. Going from less developed to developing requires some kind of a nudge and capital, and in South Korea, Bangladesh and Vietnam's cases it came from Japan, India and China respectively.
There isn't a similar case in sub-Saharan Africa yet. If South Africa can get it's economy back in track, there might be a shot for the rest of the continent, as they are in the right position to diffuse capital, human capital, and businesses.
[0] - https://www.ft.com/content/683047ac-b857-11e9-96bd-8e884d3ea...
(Average annual HDI growth from 2010 to 2021 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Dev...)
The other region which has grown fast is the China area but that may slow a bit as China de-accelerates.
Life Expectancy and Literacy rate has been growing at a significant amount in plenty of sub-Saharan Africa over the past few years, but that's from a low base. The extremely low hanging fruit will be largely caught within a decade, which will then slow down as that requires significant reforms and expansion in healthcare and education quality and availability.
Per Capita Income will still always be a significant issue though, as my earlier point still stands. You need a strong economy to further grow out, and that is largely a factor of good education as well as you need to climb up the value chain.
Climbing the value chain is hard without outside stimulus. Most countries that have seen a rapid transformation were able to do so because another country decided to mentor and invest a massive amount in the country's economic base.
There just isn't a reason to do any manufacturing or high value services in most sub-Saharan African economies. There are plenty of cheap and well integrated Asian countries right now like like Bangladesh, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, parts of India that can still be competitive in low manufacturing for the next 1-2 decades.
It will anyhow take 1-2 decades for some sub-Saharan countries to anyhow invest in human capital. Kenya and Tanzania have been doing some very hard work on this regard.
With Rwanda, less so if we're being honest. Flashy projects like CMU Kigali and Thailand level cleanliness aside, Rwanda hasn't been able to bring a high value industry into the country yet. It's GDP per Capita is barely $800, median income is around $750-780, and around 60% of public and infra investment is coming directly from foreign aid.
The business culture there is simply much less mature compared to that in Nairobi or Dar es Salaam, and what happens when Kagame dies?
The same thing happened with Ethiopia. Addis Ababa became very flashy and clean, yet the country ended up collapsing into civil war and almost a decade of development was washed away.
> other region which has grown fast is the China area
China's GDP growth was
>KIGALI, July 11, 2023—Rwanda’s economy grew by 9.2% in the first quarter of 2023, following 8.2% growth in 2022.
implying they are doing ok. I wish we had that sort of growth in Brexit Britain where I reside! Here we get:
>UK economy grew by 0.2% overall between April and June, after a surprisingly positive performance...
which is not quite the same.
FDI within Rwanda has actually been decreasing because of a larger pullback of donors out of Rwanda [0][1]
Most high value projects that are being built in Rwanda are being targeted at the energy sector [2]. Specifically in oil refining. The other half of major exports from Rwanda is gold, that is primarily extracted from DRC and exported from Rwanda.
Compared to its peers in East Africa, the Rwandan economy is much less complex than it should be. In all honesty, it's smokes and mirrors exacerbated by a strong PR relationship between the Rwandan govt, donors, and NGOs. You don't hear half as much about Kenya, Tanzania, or Uganda as you do about Rwanda, yet almost everything within Rwanda is basically being managed by donors, and a couple Chinese and Indian conglomerates making a quick buck [3]
> Sometimes free market economics lets countries grow without a government plan
Free Market economics still requires a formal vision or strategy to develop a country. South Korea had a formalized strategy in the 80s and 90s, China in the 90s and 2000s, India in the 2010s, etc.
If you go purely free market, then there is no actual incentive.
Take a look at neighboring Kenya. Tanzania, and Uganda. They have actual formal industrial and Human capital development projects with the intended aim of building out that muscle locally. The kinds of programs Rwanda creates like this (eg. CMU Kigali) simply don't have an RoI. The exact same thing happened in Ethiopia.
> implying they are doing ok
High GDP growth is expected at Rwanda's stage of development. But Rwanda's rate of growth is not as impressive compared to Cambodia and Vietnam when they were at a similar stage to Rwanda, but with a much lower dependency on foreign aid. Around 1.3% of GDP growth in Rwanda can be attributed to foreign aid alone. With foreign aid, it ends up getting disbursed and managed by NGOs and Donors directly, not the government. As such, this causes a significant deficiency in institutional knowledge. This has been seen with falsified poverty and economic data from Rwanda.
[0] - https://issafrica.org/iss-today/could-fdi-be-rwandas-lifelin...
[1] - https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/RWA/rwanda/foreign-dir...
[2] - https://www.gov.rw/highlights/economy-and-business
[3] - https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/China-and-India-stage-invest...
I'm sticking with my hypothesis that info tech will let Africa develop faster than most expect though. AI probably even more so.
I agree that ICT will help development massively, but that's Kenya and to a certain extent Tanzania.
ICT makes up around 15% of Kenya's exports and 10% of Uganda's, and they've both been working hard on actually building a both a strong tech industry and a strong financial industry.
Tanzania doesn't have as same a size of tech industry as Kenya or Uganda, but has been investing a massive amount on building that muscle. They also have a fairly decent industrial economy for their relative position as a LDC.
Rwanda just doesn't have a similar base or bureaucrat class as Tanzania or Kenya or Uganda. Also, Rwanda doesn't actually have a tech industry. The handful of tech companies that are even there are Indian and Chinese run MSPs there to help Indian and Chinese conglomerates that temporarily setup shop there.
Look at Forbes list of African innovations - it's bull, a pedal powered toilet, an electric pedicab made from recycled materials (like what?!)
This isn't a country we're talking about, this is a continent. Something is wrong.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/mfonobongnsehe/2014/02/13/seven...
This guy's explaination hits on what I saw there. In Africa business and politics go together. The money isn't going to support innovators or entrepreneurs or business. It's going to politicans and that's it. That's where taxes are going, that's where foreign aid is going, that's where it's all going.