Abstract:

The last two decades have seen a large number of African countries post rapid growth by the region’s historical experience. In contrast to the past, the region managed to ride through three shocks with reasonable resilience - the global financial crisis, the Euro crisis, and, more recently, commodity price shocks - with some variation across countries. About 100 million Africans were lifted out of poverty and some improvements in life expectancy were registered. In contrast to the Asian emerging economies, however, this progress was made without significant structural transformation or creation of modern jobs. The advent of artificial intelligence and data technologies have made industrialization increasingly jobless as robots "take over." Has the region missed on the opportunity to get on the escalator that helped Asian economies catch up and reduce poverty very significantly? What alternative escalators for structural transformation, catching up income-wise, and poverty reduction are available to the region? How should the region position itself to take advantage of disruptive technologies to make progress toward prosperity? The presentation will offer some ideas in response to these questions.

Speaker Bio:

Professor Benno J. Ndulu just completed a 10-year term as Governor of the Bank of Tanzania, the country's Central Bank, and is now the Mwalimu Nyerere Professorial Chair on Development at the University of Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania. He is best known for having served as one of the pioneers for the most effective research and training network in economics in Africa, the African Economic Research Consortium, where he served first as its research Director and then as its Executive Director. Having begun his career in academia at the University of Dar-es Salaam, he later served in the World Bank as a Research Manager in Development Economics (DEC) and Advisor to Vice President Africa Region. He has published widely on growth, governance, and trade. He is currently co-directing the Commission on Technology and Inclusive Development anchored at Blavatnik School of Government.

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