The Quality of Growth in Africa

09/17/2019
Book
Columbia University Press
Macroeconomics

Author(s)

Ravi Kanbur

In recent years, concerns about the outcomes and nature of economic growth have given way to a new emphasis on its quality. This volume brings together prominent international contributors to consider a range of interrelated questions concerning the quality of growth in Africa, with a primary focus on sub-Saharan countries.

Contributors discuss the measurement of growth, the transformations necessary to sustain it, and issues around equity and well-being. They consider topics such as the distribution of income gains from growth; the extent to which economic growth has resulted in improvements in employment, poverty, and security; structural transformations of the economy and diversification of the sources of growth; environmental sustainability; and management of urbanization. Offering both diagnoses and prescriptions, The Quality of Growth in Africa helps envision a future that goes beyond increasing GDP to ensuring that growth translates into advancements in well-being. Although the book focuses on sub-Saharan Africa, much of the contributors’ incisive analysis has implications for countries outside the region.

About the Editors

Joseph Stiglitz
President
Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD)

Joseph E. Stiglitz is President of the Initiative for Policy Dialogue, and Chairman of the Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University. He is University Professor at Columbia, teaching in its Economics Department, its Business School, and its School of International and Public Affairs. He chaired the UN Commission of Experts on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System, created in the aftermath of the financial crisis by the President of the General Assembly. He is former Chief Economist and Senior Vice-President of the World Bank and Chairman of President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisors. He was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 2001.

Akbar Noman
Senior Policy Fellow
Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD)

Akbar Noman is Senior Fellow at the Initiative for Policy Dialogue and Adjunct Professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. His other academic appointments include Oxford University, and the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex. Dr. Noman has spent over 25 years at the World Bank, where he held a variety of assignments. His regional foci included Africa, Asia and the transition economies in Europe and Central Asia. He has served as Economic Adviser to Pakistan’s Ministry of Finance and on the Prime Minister’s Committee on Economic Policy. He has also worked for the ILO’s Asian Regional Team for Employment Promotion based in Bangkok and as a Visiting Fellow at Oxford University.

Ravi Kanbur
Professor of Economics
Cornell University

Ravi Kanbur is T. H. Lee Professor of World Affairs, International Professor of Applied Economics and Management, and Professor of Economics at Cornell University. He holds an appointment tenured both in the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and in the Department of Economics in the College of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Kanbur has served on the staff of the World Bank, as Economic Adviser, Senior Economic Adviser, Resident Representative in Ghana, Chief Economist of the African Region of the World Bank, and Principal Adviser to the Chief Economist of the World Bank. He has also served as Director of the World Bank’s World Development Report.