ABSTRACT
Sub-Saharan Africa is a region on the rise. The cultural cluster, which includes approximately 50 African countries located south of the Sahara desert, is growing more prosperous, more populous, and more stable. Africa’s economy as a whole has been growing at the second-fastest rate on earth, surpassed only by East Asia. Sub-Saharan African countries are growing even faster than the continent overall, and their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is expected to increase by 6.9 percent annually through 2019. The growth is being driven by increased prices for commodities the region supplies, such as oil and minerals, as well as by the manufacturing, telecommunication, transportation, and wholesale and retail trade sectors (Leke, Lund, Manyika, & Ramaswamy, 2014).
