Sustainable Development in Post-Pandemic Africa

In addition to triggering the most severe recession in nearly a century, the Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted global value chains, causing unprecedented damage to health care systems, economies, and well-being, while also hitting the world's most vulnerable people the hardest. Even before the pandemic, low commodity prices, high debt levels, low levels of domestic savings, and weak private capital constituted a major drag on GDP growth across several African economies. This book argues that now, as the continent emerges from the current crisis, it will be important to reconfigure current financing sources under a forward-looking framework that incorporates other non-traditional financing tools and mechanisms such as public-private partnerships, sovereign wealth funds, gender lens investing, new growth drivers, and emerging and disruptive technologies. The book concludes by adopting a sectoral approach and examining the real economy impacts of new growth drivers such as agriculture value chains, industrialization, tourism, and the blue economy.

Drawing on a range of original research as well as insights from practice, this book will be a useful guide for Global Development and African Studies researchers, as well as for policy makers, investors, finance specialists, global business practitioners, and entrepreneurs.