Atlantic Council

The Ansari Africa Center, in partnership with the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), hosted a public presentation of the newly released 2010 edition of the African Economic Outlook Report on June 15, 2010.  Mario Pezzini, Director ad interim of the OECD Development Center, Mthuli Ncube, Chief Economist at African Development Bank, and Jean-Philippe Stijns, Economist with the Africa and Middle East Desk of OECD Development spoke about African economic growth and resilience, mobilization of domestic resources, tax reform, trade policies and private sector growth.  Ambassadors Adebowale Adefuye of Nigeria, Amina Salum Ali of the African Union, Cyrille S. Oguin of Benin, Ombeni Sefue of Tanzania, and Fatima Veiga of Cape Verde were in attendance.  Atlantic Council Board Member and the Head of the OECD Washington DC, Jill A. Schuker gave the introduction and Ansari Africa Center Deputy Director, Dr. Martin Kimani, moderated the discussion.

More on Mr. Mthulil Ncube:

Mthuli Ncube is Vice President and Chief Economist of the African Development Bank. A national of South Africa, he formerly served as the dean of the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management at the University of the Witwatersrand. He is also chair of the African Economic Research Consortium board and Founder and Chairman of Selwyn Capital Group and Barbican Holdings. He also worked for Investec Asset Management as a Portfolio Manager and Head of Asset Allocation Strategy. Earlier in his career, Mr. Ncube was a Lecturer in Finance at the London School of Economics. He is has published widely in the areas of finance and economics in the Journal of Econometrics, Journal of Banking and Finance, Mathematical Finance, Applied Financial Economics, International Journal of Auditing, Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, Journal of Cost Management and Journal of African Economies, among others. He holds a PhD from Cambridge University and has published widely in financial economics.

More on Jean Phillippe Stijns:

Jean Phillippe Stijns is an Economist on the Africa and Middle East Desk at the OECD Development Centre. His areas of research are natural resource economics, development macroeconomics, and international economics. He is lead policy analyst for the thematic chapter of the 2010 edition of the African Economic Outlook on “Public Resource Mobilization and Aid”. Prior to joining the Development Centre, Mr. Stijns worked a Strategist for ING Private Capital Management, the asset management arm of ING Private Banking. He has also worked as an Assistant Professor at Northeastern University where he taught Macroeconomics and International Economics to both undergraduate and graduate students; and at the CREPP at the University of Liège, a center for the study of Population and Public Economics as a research fellow. Mr. Stijns received a joint B.A.-M.A. in Economics from the University of Liège (with the Greatest Distinction), Belgium and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley.

2010 African Economic Outlook (AEO) In Brief:

This year’s edition finds Africa’s economies weakened by the global recession and at the same time under pressure to make additional efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. The world economic crisis brought a period of high growth in Africa to a sudden end. Average economic growth was slashed from an average of about 6% in 2006-2008 to 2.5% in 2009 with per capita GDP growth coming to a near standstill. The global crisis of 2009 had its strongest effect on southern Africa, where growth was slashed (from the average over the preceding three years) by almost 8 percentage points to negative growth of around 1%.

While Africa is on a path to recovery, buoyed by the strengthening of global trade and the rebound of commodity prices, there is a risk that growth remains too low to significantly reduce unemployment and poverty. It is against the backdrop that the 2010 AEO explores how public resources can be better mobilized for development through more effective, more efficient and fairer taxation. This issue is particularly important given the uncertainties about future export revenues and unstable and unpredictable inflows of Foreign Direct Investment and Official Development Aid. It includes an analysis of practices that erode the existing tax base such as the excessive granting of tax preferences, insufficient taxation of extractive industries and an inability to fight abuses of transfer pricing by multinational enterprises.

About the African Economic Outlook Report:

Produced annually by the Development Center and the African Development Bank together with the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa, the African Economic Outlook (AEO) is the essential economic reference on Africa. Now in its ninth year, the AEO presents a comprehensive analysis of economic, political and social developments on the continent. It is unique in applying a common analytical framework to the 50 countries it covers. The AEO is the only report on Africa produced by African institutions, in partnership with international organizations.

To view the full report, click here.

Podcast (MP3):

Remarks and Q&A by
Mthuli Ncube
Chief Economist, African Development Bank

Jean-Philippe Stijns
Economist, Africa and Middle East Desk, OECD Development
 
Introduction by
Jill A. Schuker
Head of OECD Washington Center

Welcome by
Martin Kimani
Deputy Director, Atlantic Council Ansari Africa Center