Introduction

Economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa has lagged behind that in other regions over the past five decades (1965-2011). This poor performance contrasts with earlier high hopes, as Sub-Saharan Africa was believed to have the potential for rapid growth (Enke, 1963; Kamarck, 1967). The World Bank has undertaken a number of studies (for example, 1981, 1989; Lele, 1991; Husain and Faruquee, 1994) to analyse the gap between this perceived potential and actual performance. Sub-Saharan Africa has a large number of least developed countries (LDCs) as defined by the United Nations (UN), and also most of the failed fragile states, as defined by the UK's aid agency, the Department for International Development (DfID). The UN lists 48 countries as LDCs, and Sub-Saharan Africa contains 33 of these. While different agencies differ in their definition and classification of a fragile or failed state, there is considerable overlap. Based on the DfID classification, Harttgen and Klasen (2009) and Stewart and Brown (2009) classified 14 countries as failed states and 20 as non-failed states in Sub-Saharan Africa. This chapter explores the extent to which the poor performance of Sub-Saharan Africa is because of the considerable presence of the LDCs and the failed states in the region. For instance, Easterly and Levine (1997) ascribe the poor performance of Sub-Saharan Africa to ethnic divisions, which leads to poor governance and conflict, and so to fragility.

In the next section we compare Africa's economic performance with that of other world regions, highlighting its progress through various indicators describing growth, exports, current account and income inequality. The third section further studies the indicators mentioned, comparing them between failed and non-failed states, and LDCs and non-LDCs. We conclude from this comparison that the distinction between failed and non-failed states and LDCs and non-LDCs is tenuous when measuring economic performance. Furthermore, their performance is influenced considerably by international factors. It is therefore important that the system of international economic governance including the G20 must seek to raise the growth rate of GDP in the developed countries, reform institutions such as The World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) to increase the voice of developing countries, and reverse the trend of the declining importance of aid.