171 D uring the last decade or so, Africa, once labeled by the Economist as the “Hope- less Continent,” has been rebranded by the same magazine as “Africa Rising.” Described by then–British Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2001 as “a scar on our consciences,” Africa has become the home of “roaring lions” and the “fastest bil- lion”—contrasting with the image of the world’s most impoverished “bottom billion,” in the words of the economist Paul Collier. These new moni- kers and the ebullient optimism they reflect are a welcome change. They have replaced a costly “Af- ropessimism” that reigned in Western media and academic circles during much of the 1980s and 1990s. The costs of the negative stereotypes of that period were felt not only in terms of Africa’s self- esteem but also financially: They depicted Africa as economically much riskier than it ever was and dampened the animal spirits of investors. Afropessimism never caught on in Africa itself. With 70 percent of its population under the age of 20, the continent is perhaps too youthful to in- dulge in despair. Now the threat to sound reflec- tion on the future is “Afro-euphoria.” But opinion surveys by Afrobarometer suggest that Africans may also be immune to the new fad. Despite serious doubts about the reliability of official data, African economies have been grow- ing fairly rapidly during the past decade or so, following the two “lost decades” that nourished negative images. African cities now exude a new vibrancy after years of depressing decay. Western media, which have often turned a blind eye to the continent, are beginning to notice the change. And so the “Africa Rising” narrative is understandable. However, as the graph on the next page sug- gests, we should bear in mind that this is not the first time that postindependence African econo- mies have grown rapidly. The first decade of inde- pendence saw growth rates that exceeded the cur- rent ones. Africa then endured the lost decades. It took close to two decades of growth to regain the peak income levels of the 1970s: Much of this has simply involved recovery from the consequences of the adjustment debacle that resulted from poli- cies imposed in the 1980s and 1990s by the Inter- national Monetary Fund and the World Bank. There is a difference between recovery and catching up with the rest of the world. Recovery basically puts to use existing, underutilized capac- ities to get back to earlier levels of development. Catching up involves the creation of new capaci- ties and is thus an inherently more demanding task. The real challenge for Africa is not merely re- covery but “accelerated development”—the unful- filled promise made by the World Bank to Africa in its landmark 1981 Berg Report. Given this postcolonial experience, there are three tasks that should preoccupy policy makers. The first task is simply trying to understand the factors behind the economic recovery, separating fortuitous windfall gains from the more durable factors that can be harnessed to sustain the current boom and make the recovery stronger and more in- clusive. The second task is to assess the magnitude of the growth and its adequacy for addressing the severe underdevelopment and poverty that afflict the African continent. The third is to deal with the legacy of the structural adjustment debacle. PATERNITY CLAIMS Claims to paternity of the African economic re- covery have come from many quarters. Incumbent THANDIKA MKANDAWIRE is a professor of African develop- ment at the London School of Economics. Can Africa Turn from Recovery to Development? THANDIKA MKANDAWIRE CURRENT HISTORY May 2014 “For more than a decade, African policy making was limited to a narrow space prescribed by the Washington Consensus. Things are changing now, facilitated by the collapse of that doctrine.”