Somalilandsun – Africa is “taking off” with strong, steady growth but poverty is unacceptably high so that governments need to build infrastructure and institutions and educate people to share the benefits more widely, the IMF’s head said on Thursday.
Sub-Saharan Africa is expected to grow by around 5.5 percent this year – well above the global average – with some of its poorest countries expanding by closer to 7 percent, Christine Lagarde, International Monetary Fund (IMF) managing director, told an IMF conference in the Mozambican capital Maputo.
But the IMF chief said although the region had become a growing investment destination for both advanced and emerging economies, with a record $80 billion of inflows expected this year, the economic benefits of the growth surge had yet to be widely distributed across the region’s population.
“Poverty remains stuck at unacceptably high levels – still afflicting about 45 percent of the region’s households,” Lagarde told the meeting of African finance ministers and development experts.
