Africa rising? A historical perspective
通过比较英国、日本和加纳的发展路径，审视非洲近期经济繁荣能否在2030年前消除贫困，指出人口红利和劳动密集型出口导向工业化的可能性，但认为短期脱贫希望渺茫。
Sub-Saharan Africa’s recent economic boom has raised hopes and expectations to lift the regions’ ‘bottom millions’ out of poverty by 2030. How realistic is that goal? We approach this question by comparing the experiences of three front-runners of region-specific development trajectories – Britain’s capital-intensive, Japan’s labour-intensive, and Ghana’s land-extensive growth path, highlighting some historical analogies that are relevant for Africa, but often overlooked in the current ‘Africa rising’ debate. We draw particular attention to Africa’s demographic boom and the possibilities for a quick transition to labour-intensive export-led industrialization. Although our exercise in diachronic comparative history offers little hope for poverty eradication by 2030, we do see broadened opportunities for sustained African economic growth in the longer term.