Growth on the African continent remains subdued as the need for structural reform and infrastructure investment reaches a critical stage. According to Dr Martyn Davies, the managing director of emerging markets and Africa at Deloitte, southern Africa’s performance has been lacklustre at best. “We are seeing very subdued growth in the region which is very dependent on South Africa being able to kick-start its economy,” he told FTW. “South Africa is the laggard in the region. While there is some recovery in Zimbabwe, and Botswana and Namibia are ticking along, Zambia is really struggling and has a very negative outlook at present, much like South Africa.” He said structural reform in the region, but particularly in South Africa, was desperately needed. It was also critical to cut back on the sizes of governments and to improve their the functionality, he added. “There has to be a change in the obsolete labour legislation that exists and a real push to deliver investorfriendly environments,” he said. “You need governments that are economically informed, rational and pragmatic on all levels.” He said increasing the pace of structural reform was critical across Africa if countries wanted to increase growth – and it was just as necessary for consolidating growth in those countries already seeing higher growth figures. In comparison to southern Africa, East Africa was performing far better although they were not shooting the lights out by any means at present, said Davies. “But I am far more positive about East Africa. Ethiopia and Rwanda, as well as Kenya, are all doing reasonably well.” The rising oil price was good news for West Africa’s oil exporters while North Africa remained focused on developing its manufacturing sector which would bring some growth. Davies said it remained imperative, however, that one refrained from looking at Africa as one big whole and saw each country – and region for that matter – in context.
