The latest African Economic Outlook released by the African Development Bank Group (AfDB) has detected what it describes as desynchronization between economic growth performance and sustainable development which suggests that Africa's current development model is not fit for purpose.
According to the document, The Existing Development Model, which relies heavily on resource extraction without value addition, urgently requires a complete overhaul if the continent is to catch up with other regions. "The urgency is such that, under a business-as-usual scenario, it could take today African countries more than a century on average (108 years, for a median of 86 years) to transition to a high-income status," the report noted.
Africa remains the second-most economically unequal region in the world, after Latin America and the Caribbean.
Over 600 million people on the continent currently have no access to electricity and more than 600,000 die annually from indoor air pollution associated with the use of biomass (charcoal) for cooking and at current growth trends, close to 9 out of 10 of the world's extremely poor people will be in Africa by 2030.