Growth, unemployment dominate Africa Economic Congress in Malabo

Growth and production should go hand in hand, but for many countries in Africa, it’s a struggle to tie these two elements together.

That hardship presents the need for economies on the continent to diversify agents of growth and development, geared towards ending inequality, providing jobs for youth and women, and formalizing the informal sector.

These are some of the key issues under debate, at the Africa Economic Congress in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea.

“The informal sector is a fight for all of us because the informal sector plays a key role in the African economy, so we have to act together to formalize the informal sector”, Victor Harison, AU Commissioner for economics affairs.

The World Bank reports the Africa’s aggregate growth is expected to rise to 3.2 percent in 2018 and 3.5 percent in 2019, but more can be done as the continent’s largest economies recover.

Samouel Beji, a research fellow at the University of Sousse, Tunisia said, “we need to diversify economies, to industrialize, and also try to move from primary to secondary or tertiary and to improve governance indicators to ensure the sustainability and stability of growth in African economies”

And good governance indicators, experts say, should be coupled with training for managers.

“Producing a generation of highly trained professional managers will address the other problems from country to country”, Richard America, Georgetown University.

The African Union economic affairs department estimates that 40 percent of the African population lives in poverty, a figure not in line with the growth resilience demonstrated throughout Africa.