ABSTRACT
The issue: will there be a long-term trend in the twenty-first century whereby more and more countries are competing for the exports of primary products from a few countries?
Issue 6 Economic growth Few politicians, whether elected by their citizens or selfelected, would care or dare in the 1990s to declare a moratorium on economic growth. Increasing the production of goods and services at a faster rate than the growth of population is seen as the only means of increasing living standards and a means of reducing unemployment or of keeping it from increasing. Until the 1970s, economists have regarded the ‘development gap’ between the rich and poor countries as a temporary phase. Whether on the assumptions of Soviet economists inspired by Marx or of American economists happy with Rostow’s stages of economic growth (see Rostow, 1960), many expected the less developed countries to ‘catch up’ the more developed ones. The expectation as expressed in 1963 by the Economic Commission for Africa (1963, pp. 4-5) is summed up in the following rather sanguine fashion:
The main object of economic growth in any country has always been to increase the supply of goods and services available for present consumption and of investible resources to assure future development. In this respect, the experience of the industrial countries has considerable relevance for Africa To raise the low per caput output in Africa and other industrially less developed areas to the output of the industrial countries is now generally accepted as a long term objective of economic development The economic transition in Africa would involve… a twenty-five fold increase in industrial output per caput for the whole population.
