ABSTRACT
For more than 25 years prior to 2000, sub-Saharan Africa, excluding the Republic of South Africa, has been growing more slowly than other developing regions. On a per capita purchasing power basis, sub-Saharan Africa often did not grow at all or even declined. After a decade during which the average annual rate of growth of real per capita income had been –0.7 percent, that rate averaged 2 percent between 2000 and 2006. By 2009, that rate had again turned negative, and might be close to –1 percent according to one forecast (World Bank 2009, 30). Because of its abysmal record, Africa has become home to an undue share of ‘the bottom billion’, 70 percent of whom are in the continent of Africa, many in sub-Saharan Africa (Collier 2007, 7).
