The Africa Competitiveness Report, 2000–2001 Publication Year 2000
Klaus Schwab, Lisa D. Cook, Peter K. Cornelius, Jeffrey D. Sachs, Sara E. Sievers, Andrew Warner
The Africa Competitiveness Report 1998 became the first systematic benchmarking exercise for Africa, combining broader macroeconomic and political analysis with analysis of firm and country competitiveness. Using a continental standard, we attempted to answer the question: How fragile or deep is the competitiveness of one African country relative to another?
The ACR 2000-20011 is being produced in a context quite different from the first Report published in 1998. The most important piece of good news is surely the democratization of Nigeria, which gives new hope to sub-Saharan Africa’s most populous nation. If Nigeria consolidates its democracy and begins to achieve sustained economic growth, the positive ramifications for West Africa, and indeed all of sub-Saharan Africa, will be enormous. The deepening of democratic processes in Senegal and South Africa is also noteworthy. Another piece of good news is the progress, albeit inadequate, on debt relief for the highly indebted poor countries (HIPCs) of the region. While the main creditors can’t quite bring themselves to the obvious step of debt cancellation, they have all acknowledged the eventual need to write off the unpayable debts. When this happens, it will mark an important financial turning point for sub-Saharan Africa. Another piece of good news is that economic growth in many countries, and in the region as a whole, has continued to be stronger than in the first half of the 1990’s, though regional growth slowed in 1998 and 1999 compared with 1995-1997.
On the other hand, the news from much of Africa is bleaker than just two years ago. The shocking extent of the HIV/AIDS epidemic has become clearer. Africa is now home to around two-thirds of the HIV-infected individuals in the world. Civil strife continues to ravage the region, from Ethiopia and Eritrea, through the Democratic Republic of Congo, and on to Angola. Political unrest grips several countries, such as Zimbabwe, and this unrest translates strongly into a decline of international competitiveness in those countries.
https://kellogg.nd.edu/africa-competitiveness-report-2000%E2%80%932001