Policies for catalysing investment in Africa: national and regional aspects

This chapter discusses policies that are necessary at the national and regional levels to catalyse investment for transformative growth in Africa. It draws on the empirical facts and challenges to boosting investment in Africa discussed in the previous two chapters. It underscores the fact that catalysing investment to achieve high, sustained and transformative growth in Africa requires boosting the quantity of investment, ensuring that it goes to strategic or priority sectors of an economy and improving the productivity or quality of that investment. Most discussions on investment in Africa tend to focus on the quantity issue. However, the historical experiences of developed and emerging economies suggest that enhancing the quality of investment and ensuring that it goes to productive and strategic sectors are also necessary to maximize its impact in an economy. Against this background the policy recommendations discussed in this chapter will be organized around the following three areas: increasing the level and rate of investment; ensuring that investment goes to priority sectors; and improving the productivity or quality of investment.

Related Subject(s): Economic and Social Development